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Lagrangian particle tracking In experimental fluid mechanics, Lagrangian Particle Tracking refers to the process of determining long 3-Dimensional trajectories of small neutrally buoyant particles (flow tracers) that are freely suspended within a turbulent flow field. These are usually obtained by 3-D Particle Tracking Velocimetry. A collection of such particle trajectories can be used for analyzing the Lagrangian dynamics of the fluid motion, for performing Lagrangian statistics of various flow quantities etc. In computational fluid dynamics, the (or in short LPT method) is a numerical technique for simulated tracking of particle paths Lagrangian within an Eulerian phase. It is also commonly referred to as Discrete Particle Simulation (DPS). Some simulation cases for which this method is applicable are: sprays, small bubbles, dust particles, and is especially optimal for dilute multiphase flows with large Stokes number. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36714938 | 333,843 |
Prince Rupert's drop The drops are reliably reported to have been made in Mecklenburg in North Germany, as early as 1625. However, it has been claimed that they were invented in the Netherlands (although it has been suggested that they had been known about by glassmakers since the time of the Roman Empire), hence common names for them in the 17th century were "lacrymae Borussicae" (Prussian tears) or "lacrymae Batavicae" (Dutch tears). The secret of how to make them remained in the Mecklenburg area for some time, although the drops were disseminated across Europe from there, for sale as toys or curiosities. The Dutch scientist Constantijn Huygens asked Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle to investigate the properties of the drops; her opinion after carrying out experiments was that a small amount of volatile liquid was trapped inside. Although Prince Rupert did not discover the drops, he played a role in their history by bringing them to Britain in 1660. He gave them to King Charles II, who in turn delivered them in 1661 to the Royal Society (which had been created the previous year) for scientific study. Several early publications from the Royal Society give accounts of the drops and describe experiments performed. Among these publications was "Micrographia" of 1665 by Robert Hooke, who later would discover Hooke's Law | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1574904 | 318,964 |
Old age In the United States the proportion of people aged 65 or older increased from 4% in 1900 to about 12% in 2000. In 1900, only about of the nation's citizens were 65 or older (out of 76 million total American citizens). By 2000, the number of senior citizens had increased to about 35 million (of 280 million US citizens). Population experts estimate that more than Americans—about 17 percent of the population—will be 65 or older in 2020. By 2050, it is projected that at least 400,000 Americans will be 100 or older. The number of old people is growing around the world chiefly because of the post–World War II baby boom and increases in the provision and standards of health care. By 2050, 33% of the developed world's population and almost 20% of the less developed world's population will be over 60 years old. The growing number of people living to their 80s and 90s in the developed world has strained public welfare systems and has also resulted in increased incidence of diseases like cancer and dementia that were rarely seen in premodern times. When the United States Social Security program was created, persons older than 65 numbered only around 5% of the population and the average life expectancy of a 65-year-old in 1936 was approximately 5 years, while in 2011 it could often range from 10 to 20 years. Other issues that can arise from an increasing population are growing demands for health care and an increase in demand for different types of services | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=229060 | 13,808 |
LaserDisc player The LD-W1 remained in the Pioneer catalog for many years and received many improvements: While the first version of the W1 had only 2X oversampling and 16-bit D/A converters in the digital audio, the later units had 4X oversampling with 20-bit D/A converters. The video noise reduction was improved, too, sharpening the picture and reducing disc noise while eliminating the artifacts it caused. In addition, high-frequency response in the FM video demodulator and A/D-D/A converters was extended and flattened, increasing resolution and reducing visible digital artifacts. The W1's player software was refined too, making disc and side-changing faster, plus, during side or disc changes, it grabbed a still-frame closer to the actual end-of-program instead of just any frame from the side's last five minutes. The Pioneer PR7820 was the first mass-produced, industrial LaserDisc player, sold originally as the MCA DiscoVision PR-7820. This unit was used in many GM dealerships as a source of training videos and presentation of GM's new line of cars and trucks in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After MCA DiscoVision shut down, Pioneer continued to sell the player under the Pioneer name as the Pioneer Model-III. The unit was a full Level-III player and could accept a data-dump from discs themselves. It could also be controlled by an external computer and could be gen-locked to external video sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39101516 | 399,606 |
South-pointing chariot While none of the historic south-pointing chariots remain, full sized replicas can be found. The History Museum in Beijing, China, holds a replica based on the mechanism of Yen Su (1027). The National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, holds a replica based on the Lanchester mechanism of 1932. Referred to as the "southern pointing man", two replicas can also be seen (and physically experimented with) at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1437746 | 211,767 |
Hirao coupling The (also called the Hirao reaction or the Hirao cross-coupling) is the chemical reaction involving the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling of a dialkyl phosphite and an aryl halide to form a phosphonate. This reaction is named after Toshikazu Hirao and is related to the Michaelis-Arbuzov reaction. In contrast to the classic Michaelis-Arbuzov reaction, which is limited to alkyl phosphonates, the can also deliver aryl phosphonates. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57647913 | 88,412 |
Automated X-ray inspection The detector either converts the x-rays first into visible light which is imaged by an optical camera, or detects directly using an x-ray sensor array. The object under inspection may be imaged at higher magnification by moving the object closer to the x-ray tube, or at lower magnification closer to the detector. Since the image is produced due to the different absorption of x-rays when passing through the object, it can reveal structures inside the object that are hidden from outside view. With the advancement of image processing software the number applications for automated x-ray inspection is huge and constantly growing. The first applications started off in industries where the safety aspect of components demanded a careful inspection of each part produced (e.g. welding seams for metal parts in nuclear power stations) because the technology was expectedly very expensive in the beginning. But with wider adoption of the technology, prices came down significantly and opened automated x-ray inspection up to a much wider field- partially fueled again by safety aspects (e.g. detection of metal, glass or other materials in processed food) or to increase yield and optimize processing (e.g. detection of size and location of holes in cheese to optimize slicing patterns). In mass production of complex items (e.g. in electronics manufacturing), an early detection of defects can drastically reduce overall cost, because it prevents defective parts from being used in subsequent manufacturing steps | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13414189 | 404,511 |
Theoretical computer science Although, properly speaking, computer algebra should be a subfield of scientific computing, they are generally considered as distinct fields because scientific computing is usually based on numerical computation with approximate floating point numbers, while symbolic computation emphasizes "exact" computation with expressions containing variables that have not any given value and are thus manipulated as symbols (therefore the name of "symbolic computation"). Software applications that perform symbolic calculations are called "computer algebra systems", with the term "system" alluding to the complexity of the main applications that include, at least, a method to represent mathematical data in a computer, a user programming language (usually different from the language used for the implementation), a dedicated memory manager, a user interface for the input/output of mathematical expressions, a large set of routines to perform usual operations, like simplification of expressions, differentiation using chain rule, polynomial factorization, indefinite integration, etc. Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device. Before the introduction of VLSI technology most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=323392 | 111,149 |
Raytheon Company The was a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007. Raytheon was the world's largest producer of guided missiles. In April 2020, the company merged with United Technologies Corporation to form Raytheon Technologies. Established in 1922, the company reincorporated in 1928 and adopted its present name in 1959. As of 2018, the company had around 67,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues of approximately US$25.35 billion. More than 90% of Raytheon's revenues were obtained from military contracts and, as of 2012, it was the fifth-largest military contractor in the world. , it is the third largest defense contractor in the United States by defense revenue. In 2003, Raytheon's headquarters moved from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Waltham, Massachusetts. The company had previously been headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1922 to 1928, Newton, Massachusetts, from 1928 to 1941, Waltham from 1941 to 1961 and Lexington from 1961 to 2003. In 1922, two former Tufts University School of Engineering, roommates Laurence K. Marshall and Vannevar Bush, along with scientist Charles G. Smith, founded the American Appliance Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its focus, which was originally on new refrigeration technology, soon shifted to electronics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=248454 | 399,184 |
Plug-in electric vehicles in the United States The new law also raises the previous purchase price cap to , which will allow buyers of the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the next generation Nissan Leaf, and the Tesla Model 3 – all with of electric range – to be eligible for the incentive. The new law goes into effect on July 1, 2016. Under the updatede scheme, the sales tax exemption applies to the first of the selling price of a qualifying new plug-in electric car, which translates into a tax savings between to for plug-in car buyers depending on where the dealer is located within the state, as the sales tax vary by county. The tax exemption could expire before July 2019 if sales of electric vehicles accelerate because legislators established that the tax break should end the month after 7,500 qualifying vehicles are sold in the state. The state Department of Licensing was directed to start a tally beginning with PEV registrations since July 15, 2015. , the state sales tax is 6.5%, and increases up to 9.8% depending on the county rate. Puget Sound Energy (PSE) provides a rebate to the first 5,000 qualified customers for the purchase and installation of Level 2 electric vehicle charging station (EVSE). Eligible applicants must be PSE residential electric schedule 7 customers, must be the registered owner of an electric vehicle, and must install the charging station within a specified timeframe. PSE expects the rebate program to remain available until November 1, 2016, depending on available funds | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24620684 | 377,688 |
Human factors and ergonomics Designers (industrial, interaction, and graphic), anthropologists, technical communication scholars and computer scientists also contribute. Typically, an ergonomist will have an undergraduate degree in psychology, engineering, design or health sciences, and usually a master's degree or doctoral degree in a related discipline. Though some practitioners enter the field of human factors from other disciplines, both M.S. and PhD degrees in Human Factors Engineering are available from several universities worldwide. Contemporary offices did not exist until the 1830s with, Wojciech Jastrzębowsk's seminal book on MSDergonomics following in 1857 and the first published study of posture appearing in 1955s As the American workforce began to shift towards sedentary employment, the prevalence of [WMSD/cognitive issues/ etc..] began to rise. In 1900, 41% of the US workforce was employed in agriculture but by 2000 that had dropped to 1.9% This coincides with an increase in growth in desk-based employment (25% of all employment in 2000) and the surveillance of non-fatal workplace injuries by OSHA and Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1971. 0–1.5 and occurs in a sitting or reclining position. Adults older than 50 years report spending more time sedentary and for adults older than 65 years this is often 80% of their awake time. Multiple studies show a dose-response relationship between sedentary time and all-cause mortality with an increase of 3% mortality per additional sedentary hour each day | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36479878 | 476,341 |
Polymerase chain reaction This usually involves spatial separation of PCR-setup areas from areas for analysis or purification of PCR products, use of disposable plasticware, and thoroughly cleaning the work surface between reaction setups. Primer-design techniques are important in improving PCR product yield and in avoiding the formation of spurious products, and the usage of alternate buffer components or polymerase enzymes can help with amplification of long or otherwise problematic regions of DNA. Addition of reagents, such as formamide, in buffer systems may increase the specificity and yield of PCR. Computer simulations of theoretical PCR results (Electronic PCR) may be performed to assist in primer design. PCR allows isolation of DNA fragments from genomic DNA by selective amplification of a specific region of DNA. This use of PCR augments many ways, such as generating hybridization probes for Southern or northern hybridization and DNA cloning, which require larger amounts of DNA, representing a specific DNA region. PCR supplies these techniques with high amounts of pure DNA, enabling analysis of DNA samples even from very small amounts of starting material. Other applications of PCR include DNA sequencing to determine unknown PCR-amplified sequences in which one of the amplification primers may be used in Sanger sequencing, isolation of a DNA sequence to expedite recombinant DNA technologies involving the insertion of a DNA sequence into a plasmid, phage, or cosmid (depending on size) or the genetic material of another organism | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23647 | 86,606 |
Market monetarism Market monetarists contend that by not paying attention to nominal income, the Federal Reserve has actually destabilized the US economy; nominal GDP fell 11% below trend during the 2008 recession, and has remained there since. Market monetarists believe that by explicitly following a nominal income target, monetary policy would be extremely effective in addressing aggregate demand shocks; summarizing this view, "The Economist" stated: "If people expect the central bank to return spending to a 5% growth path, their beliefs will help get it there. Firms will hire, confident that their revenues will expand; people will open their wallets, confident of keeping their jobs. Those hoarding cash will spend it or invest it, because they know that either output or prices will be higher in the future." Market monetarists reject the conventional wisdom that monetary policy is mostly irrelevant when an economy is in a liquidity trap (when short-term interest rates approach zero), arguing instead that liquidity traps are more associated with low nominal GDP growth than with low inflation. Market monetarists claim that policies such as quantitative easing, charging instead of paying interest on excess bank reserves, and having the central bank publicly commit to nominal income targets can provide an exit from the trap. Interest rates reached zero in Japan but not in China when they each experienced mild deflation | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33382732 | 503,147 |
Croatian Natural History Museum As the library was not professionally maintained during the Croatian War of Independence or inventoried since, it is not known how many titles it holds. A 1999 estimate is 30,000 volumes and 13,100 monographs. In 1885, Brusina led a successful initiative to publish "The Journal of the Croatian Natural History Society" (). The journal is published since 1972 under the title "Periodicum biologorum", and focuses on biology and biomedicine, forestry and biotechnology. In 1992, the museum began publishing "Natura Croatica", a peer-reviewed biological and geological academic journal. The natural history journal was the first of its kind in Croatia, despite the existence of seven natural history museums. The journal is published quarterly in English, and reviewed by both Croatian and foreign scholars. The museum is divided into Mineralogical–Petrographical, Geological–Palaeontological, Zoological and Botanical Departments. The first three are successors to the National Museum's 19th-century offspring museums, while the Botanical Department was established in 1990. The museum's holdings number over 2 million rocks, minerals, fossils, and other artefacts collected all over the country. The zoological collection consists of 1,135,000 animal specimens, including a tissue bank for DNA analysis. It also holds the remains of the Neanderthal man found near Krapina by Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, a former director of the National Museum | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47442017 | 7,326 |
Tourbillon Castle After Boniface died in 1308, his successor Aymon II de Châtillon probably finished the castle. In 1352 the Upper Valais revolted against Bishop Guichard Tavel. Led by Peter de la Tour, in November of that year, they marched on Sion, burned the town and unsuccessfully besieged the castle. In 1373, the Prince-Bishop bought Majorie Castle and moved his residence off the rocky spire. However, Bishop Tavel was not able to enjoy his new palace for long. In 1375 he was captured and murdered by rebels led by Peter's son, Anton de la Tour, in 1375. Tourbillon became the Prince-Bishop's summer residence and remained a visible symbol of secular and ecclesiastical power. In 1384 a group of rebels attacked Sion and captured Tourbillon and Majoria. Bishop Eduard of Savoy had to request soldiers from Count Amadeus VII of Savoy and Bern to retake his castles. A large part of the castle was destroyed during the Raron affair in 1417 and Bishop Wilhelm V of Raron had to flee to Bern. The castle was then rebuilt in the 1440s to 1450s by Bishop Guillaume VI of Raron. As part of the reconstruction, the chapel was repaired and painted with Gothic frescoes which are still visible. It remained the administrative center of the diocese but in later centuries the military importance of the castle decreased. On 24 May 1788, a gigantic fire in Sion reduced the castle to ashes. The Bishop planned to rebuilt Tourbillon, but the revolutions sweeping through Europe ended the plans | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10650496 | 364,374 |
Sexual mimicry These characteristics, as well as high androgen levels in their blood, make for aggressive females, which results in their dominance over males; the female with the lowest rank is more dominant than the highest-ranking male. Within the female population in each clan, there are different ranks: the dominant females, who reproduce at an earlier age and get more access to food, and the non-dominant females. Their dominance is hierarchical and is passed from mother to daughter. By contrast, male spotted hyenas gain their social status with the length of their stay in the clan; it does not involve aggressive contests. The males leave their clan between the ages of two and six and join a different clan where they gain status with age. Males also foster amicable relationships with the females to stabilize their position in the social hierarchy. Because females are the dominant sex among spotted hyenas, they are the most respected. Subordinate female hyenas initiate a ‘greeting’ with dominant female hyenas as a sign of respect and are forced to do so if they refuse. This greeting used by hyenas reflects the asymmetry of their ranking; the animal being greeted (the subordinate individual) extends its hind legs and the individual doing the greeting (the dominant hyena) licks or sniffs the erect peniform clitoris. By lifting its hind legs, the hyena being greeted (the subordinate hyena) exposes its most vulnerable body part to the other individual, an act that reflects inferiority | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5334192 | 192,277 |
Chirp compression However, the mismatch loss has increased from 0.1 dB to 0.6 dB, but this is still better than the 1.6 dB figure for linear chirps. The amplitude of random noise is not changed by the compression process, so the signal to noise ratios of received chirp signals are increased in the process. In the case of a high power search radars, this extends the range performance of the system, while for stealth systems the property will permit lower transmitter powers to be used. As an illustration, a possible received noise sequence is shown, which contains a low amplitude chirp signal obscured within it. After processing by the compressor, the compressed pulse is clearly visible above the noise floor. When pulse compression is carried out in digital signal processing, after the incoming signals are digitised by A/D converters, it is important that level of the noise floor is correctly set. The noise floor at the A/D must be high enough to ensure that the noise is adequately characterised. If the noise level is too low, Nyquist will not be satisfied, and any embedded chirp will not be recovered correctly. On the other hand, setting the noise level unnecessarily high will reduce the dynamic range capability of the system. For systems using digital processing, it is important to carry out the chirp compression in the digital domain, after the A/D converters | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46803143 | 123,068 |
Alice Hamilton (February 27, 1869 – September 22, 1970) was an American physician, research scientist, and author who is best known as a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology. Hamilton trained at the University of Michigan Medical School. She became a professor of pathology at the Woman's Medical School of Northwestern University in 1897. In 1919, she became the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University. Her scientific research focused on the study of occupational illnesses and the dangerous effects of industrial metals and chemical compounds. In addition to her scientific work, Hamilton was a social-welfare reformer, humanitarian, peace activist, and a resident-volunteer at Hull House in Chicago from 1987 to 1919. She was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, most notably the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for her public-service contributions. Alice Hamilton, the second child of Montgomery Hamilton (1843–1909) and Gertrude (née Pond) Hamilton (1840–1917), was born on February 27, 1869, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. She spent a sheltered childhood among an extended family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where her grandfather, Allen Hamilton, an Irish immigrant, had settled in 1823. He married Emerine Holman, the daughter of Indiana Supreme Court Justice Jesse Lynch Holman, in 1828 and became a successful Fort Wayne businessman and a land speculator. Much of the city of Fort Wayne was built on land that he once owned | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1532239 | 97,541 |
DNA profiling Pool" (vacated as moot) suggested that this practice is somewhat analogous to a witness looking at a photograph of one person and stating that it looked like the perpetrator, which leads law enforcement to show the witness photos of similar looking individuals, one of whom is identified as the perpetrator. Regardless of whether familial DNA searching was the method used to identify the suspect, authorities always conduct a normal DNA test to match the suspect's DNA with that of the DNA left at the crime scene. Critics also claim that racial profiling could occur on account of familial DNA testing. In the United States, the conviction rates of racial minorities are much higher than that of the overall population. It is unclear whether this is due to discrimination from police officers and the courts, as opposed to a simple higher rate of offence among minorities. Arrest-based databases, which are found in the majority of the United States, lead to an even greater level of racial discrimination. An arrest, as opposed to conviction, relies much more heavily on police discretion. For instance, investigators with Denver District Attorney's Office successfully identified a suspect in a property theft case using a familial DNA search. In this example, the suspect's blood left at the scene of the crime strongly resembled that of a current Colorado Department of Corrections prisoner. Using publicly available records, the investigators created a family tree | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44290 | 160,160 |
Edwin Howard Armstrong For the rest of his life, Armstrong was afflicted with a physical tic exacerbated by excitement or stress. Due to this illness, he withdrew from public school and was home-tutored for two years. To improve his health, the Armstrong family moved to a house overlooking the Hudson River, at 1032 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers. The Smith family subsequently moved next door. Armstrong's tic and the time missed from school led him to become socially withdrawn. From an early age, Armstrong showed an interest in electrical and mechanical devices, particularly trains. He loved heights and constructed a makeshift backyard antenna tower that included a bosun's chair for hoisting himself up and down its length, to the concern of neighbors. Much of his early research was conducted in the attic of his parents' house. In 1909, Armstrong enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, where he became a member of the Epsilon Chapter of the Theta Xi engineering fraternity, and studied under Professor Michael Pupin at the Hartley Laboratories, a separate research unit at Columbia. Another of his instructors, Professor John H. Morecroft, later remembered Armstrong as being intensely focused on the topics that interested him, but somewhat indifferent to the rest of his studies. Armstrong challenged conventional wisdom and was quick to question the opinions of both professors and peers. In one case, he recounted how he tricked an instructor he disliked into receiving a severe electrical shock | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10315 | 418,939 |
Biological pacemaker In 2014, a gene called TBX18 has been non-invasively applied to speed up heart rates caused by heart block. More recent studies in 2015, has been experimented optogenetic approach in the rats heart, where a light sensitive transgene (Channelrhodopsin-2) injected to several sites of rat's ventricular, which, furthermore, can simultaneously stimulate the injection sites by a blue light irradiation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12887799 | 137,603 |
Hispano-Moresque ware The secrets of the techniques for making high-quality wares were largely lost, and after Carlos III of Spain took a personal interest a report was commissioned in 1785 to record the methods then being used, lest more was lost. By the 1870s a market had developed for pieces as close to the early work as could be managed, and a number of new firms were set up, some of which continue today, although little original work in the tradition is done. The term "Hispano-Moresque" is also used to describe figured silk textiles with geometric patterns woven in Al-Andalus, and sometimes to refer to Mudéjar or other work in other media, such as carpets, an industry which followed a similar pattern to pottery in Spain. The Metropolitan Museum of Art uses the term to describe a gilded parade helmet in its collection. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1862422 | 293,262 |
Pre-construction services are used in planning a construction project before the actual construction begins. These services are often referred to as preconstruction or precon. It is a modern practice, considered to be part of construction project management, which is the overall planning, coordination, and control of a project from inception to completion aimed at meeting a client’s requirements in order to produce a functionally and financially viable project. In the long established design-bid-build method of construction project delivery, a project would be entirely designed before being built. This resulted in a package of plans and specifications which formed the construction documents. The owner would then request bids (or tenders) for the project and award the project to a successful bidder, who would then build the project. Often the early feasibility, studies, and design development is supported by construction cost estimators, who prepare cost estimates for use in the decision-making process. This process starts with planning, and is supported by conceptual or order-of-magnitude estimates. Design then starts with a schematic design (SD) stage, followed by a design development (DD) stage, and culminates in a construction document (CD) state. In the design-bid-build system, there is a construction bidding process where the contractors’ construction cost estimators prepare the estimate and form the bid, based on the construction documents, in an intense pre-bid period, typically measured in weeks | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35573964 | 227,639 |
Mold health issues Mycotoxin-contaminated grain and other food products have a significant impact on human and animal health globally. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 25% of the world's food may be contaminated by mycotoxins. Prevention of mold exposure from food is generally to consume food that has no mold growths on it. Also, mold growth in the first place can be prevented by the same concept of mold growth, assessment, and remediation that prevents air exposure. In addition, it is especially useful to clean the inside of the refrigerator, and to ensure dishcloths, towels, sponges, and mops are clean. Ruminants are considered to have increased resistance to some mycotoxins, presumably due to the superior mycotoxin-degrading capabilities of their gut microbiota. The passage of mycotoxins through the food chain may also have important consequences on human health. For example, in China in December 2011, high levels of carcinogen aflatoxin M1 in Mengniu brand milk were found to be associated with the consumption of mold-contaminated feed by dairy cattle. Over 47 species have been identified in pillows. Flooding in houses causes a unique opportunity for mold growth which may be attributed to adverse health effects in people exposed to the mold, especially children and adolescents. In a study on the health effects of mold exposure after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the predominant types of mold were "Aspergillus, Penicillum", and "Cladosporium" with indoor spore counts ranging from 6,142 – 735,123 spores m | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42676 | 435,336 |
MNase-seq Classical ChIP-seq displays issues with resolution quality, stringency in experimental protocol, and DNA fragmentation. Classical ChIP-seq typically uses sonication to fragment chromatin, which biases heterochromatic regions due to the condensed and tight binding of chromatin regions to each other. Unlike histones, transcription factors only transiently bind DNA. Other methods, such as sonication in ChIP-seq, requiring the use of increased temperatures and detergents, can lead to the loss of the factor. CUT&RUN sequencing is a novel form of an MNase-based immunoprecipitation. Briefly, it uses an MNase tagged with an antibody to specifically bind DNA-bound proteins that present the epitope recognized by that antibody. Digestion then specifically occurs at regions surrounding that transcription factor, allowing for this complex to diffuse out of the nucleus and be obtained without having to worry about significant background nor the complications of sonication. The use of this technique does not require high temperatures or high concentrations of detergent. Furthermore, MNase improves chromatin digestion due to its exonuclease and endonuclease activity. Cells are lysed in an SDS/[[Triton X-100\\ solution. Then, the MNase-antibody complex is added. And finally, the protein-DNA complex can be isolated, with the DNA being subsequently purified and [[massive parallel sequencing|sequenced]]. The resulting soluble extract contains a 25-fold enrichment in fragments under 50bp | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63210872 | 163,439 |
Pneumatic bladder A pneumatic bladder is an inflatable (pneumatic) bag technology with many applications. Pneumatic bladders are used to seal drains and ducts to contain chemical spills or gases. Pneumatic bladders are often used for the containment of chemical spills, oil spills or fire water on water to prevent them from entering the environment, usually in the form of booms. The Reef Ball Foundation uses a pneumatic bladder technology to float an artificial coral reef ("reef ball") into location, then deflate the bladder to sink the reef to the bottom. Pneumatic bladders, known as dunnage bags, are used to stabilize cargo within a container. Pneumatic bladders are used in medical research. Leading edge inflatable kites use pneumatic bladders restrained by a fabric case; the bladder is selected slightly larger than the case, so that at operational inflation the bladder is not stressed while the case defines the final shape of the leading edge. Many of the wing's airfoil ribs are similarly bladdered. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23559796 | 350,486 |
Microcracks in rock Observation of thin section using microscope is to obtain the distributions of microcrack lengths, widths and aspect ratios, numbers and densities, as well as orientations. Another method is using acoustic emission to detect and monitor microcrack growth. Experimental results can help scientists develope numerical models, such as simulation of fracture pattern growth. Many experiments on rock fracture mechanism have been done in laboratory, but these experiments may have different requirement of specimen configuration and loading scheme. They are the two important factors controlling microcracking behavior such as microcrack development. Specimen configuration refers to the dimensions of a specimen and its man-made crack. Rock samples are usually obtained from rock cores. Therefore, cylinder shape, chevron-bend shape, and semi-circular-bend shape (SCB) are the common specimen shapes used in experimental study. For example, a semi-circular bend specimen has a man-made crack, called a notch. It is used to control the morphology of rock fracture. Two notch types can be induced: a straight-through notch or a chevron notch. A straight-through notch semi-circular-bend (SNCCB) specimen has a flat-ended notch, whereas a chevron notch semi-circular-bend (CNSCB) specimen has a V-shaped opening to the air. In fracture mechanics, there are three types of loading modes to make a crack able to propagate. They are mode I (opening), mode II (in-plane shear), and mode III (out-plane shear) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62020761 | 16,172 |
Dynamic loading In the Windows case, the conversion is straightforward, since FARPROC is essentially already a function pointer: This can be problematic when the address of an object is to be retrieved rather than a function. However, usually one wants to extract functions anyway, so this is normally not a problem. According to the POSIX specification, the result of codice_7 is a codice_10 pointer. However, a function pointer is not required to even have the same size as a data object pointer, and therefore a valid conversion between type codice_11 and a pointer to a function may not be easy to implement on all platforms. On most systems in use today, function and object pointers are "de facto" convertible. The following code snippet demonstrates one workaround which allows to perform the conversion anyway on many systems: The above snippet will give a warning on some compilers: codice_12. Another workaround is: which disables the warning even if strict aliasing is in effect. This makes use of the fact that reading from a different union member than the one most recently written to (called "[[type punning]]") is common, and explicitly allowed even if strict aliasing is in force, provided the memory is accessed through the union type directly. However, this is not strictly the case here, since the function pointer is copied to be used outside the union. Note that this trick may not work on platforms where the size of data pointers and the size of function pointers is not the same | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10131591 | 266,226 |
Electronic engineering In designing an integrated circuit, electronics engineers first construct circuit schematics that specify the electrical components and describe the interconnections between them. When completed, VLSI engineers convert the schematics into actual layouts, which map the layers of various conductor and semiconductor materials needed to construct the circuit. The conversion from schematics to layouts can be done by software (see electronic design automation) but very often requires human fine-tuning to decrease space and power consumption. Once the layout is complete, it can be sent to a fabrication plant for manufacturing. For systems of intermediate complexity, engineers may use VHDL modeling for programmable logic devices and FPGAs. Integrated circuits, FPGAs and other electrical components can then be assembled on printed circuit boards to form more complicated circuits. Today, printed circuit boards are found in most electronic devices including televisions, computers and audio players. has many subfields. This section describes some of the most popular subfields in electronic engineering; although there are engineers who focus exclusively on one subfield, there are also many who focus on a combination of subfields. Signal processing deals with the analysis and manipulation of signals. Signals can be either analog, in which case the signal varies continuously according to the information, or digital, in which case the signal varies according to a series of discrete values representing the information | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28923910 | 414,455 |
Registrar (software) Not only that, but the person would become a possible candidate for all courses of the same type automatically. If the training had not taken place within one year of the due date it would be removed from the person plan but a warning would be generated. Registrar would also check that the person had met any prerequisites that had been set for the intended training and warn if they had not been met. Within a company there are normally groups of people. It might be people working for a certain manager or they might belong to Personnel or they might work Externally. Registrar had the ability to Group people either manually or automatically the later being decided upon the values of a field. I.e. if there were a field called Internal/External having the values I and E then a Group could be created for External and if a person had a value of E then they would automatically become a member of that Group. A person could be a member of as many Groups as required. This was a list of the products that the company was prepared to arrange. The name Courses caused some confusion at the start for the users as in Registrar speak a Course was not an actual event just a list of events that could be arranged. The name given to an actual event was a Class and again this initially led to some confusion. This was an actual event on an actual date or dates that was potentially going to be run which people would attend | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23322819 | 458,987 |
Cephalopod size When erect, the penis may be as long as the mantle, head, and arms combined (Arkhipkin & Laptikhovsky, 2010:299; Walker, 2010). As such, deep water squids have the greatest known penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles (Arkhipkin & Laptikhovsky, 2010:300). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8375147 | 161,308 |
Cyber Mimic Defense Furthermore, dynamism and randomness can improve the uncertainty of multi-participatory actions with consistent or synergistic requirements. Last but not least, the multi-mode arbitrator significantly enhances the difficulty of cooperative attack under the condition of non-cooperation. If the elements in the set of heterogeneous executive entities satisfying functional equivalence are scheduled in dynamic policies, or deploy the generalized dynamic technologies such as reconfiguration, recombination, reconstruction, redefinition, and virtualization themselves, we could simplify or weaken the harsh requirements of dissimilarity design accordingly in DRS. In the post-globalization era, this conclusion is of great engineering significance for the application of trustability-uncontrollable components, including open source software, hardware or middleware and so on, to build a safe and reliable system as well as to reduce the cost, in product life cycle over the open industrial chain and the supplying chain. Mimic computing can dynamically select the solution structure environment adaptively, according to different tasks, different time, different loads, different performance requirements, different resource conditions and parameters. Mimic computing can improve processing efficiency with the benefit of structure variable computing based on active cognition. Mimic Defense fully mines the structure variable computing on the mechanism of endogenous anti-attack properties | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52920580 | 444,652 |
Mechanical filter The typical effects of some of these on filter frequency response are shown in figure 11. Bridging across a single resonator (figure 11b) can produce a pole of attenuation in the high stopband. Bridging across two resonators (figure 11c) can produce a pole of attenuation in both the high and the low stopband. Using multiple bridges (figure 11d) will result in multiple poles of attenuation. In this way, the attenuation of the stopbands can be deepened over a broad frequency range. The method of coupling between non-adjacent resonators is not limited to mechanical filters. It can be applied to other filter formats and the general term for this class is cross-coupled filter. For instance, channels can be cut between cavity resonators, mutual inductance can be used with discrete component filters, and feedback paths can be used with active analogue or digital filters. Nor was the method first discovered in the field of mechanical filters; the earliest description is in a 1948 patent for filters using microwave cavity resonators. However, mechanical filter designers were the first (1960s) to develop practical filters of this kind and the method became a particular feature of mechanical filters. A new technology emerging in mechanical filtering is microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). MEMS are very small micromachines with component sizes measured in micrometres (μm), but not as small as nanomachines | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25154546 | 423,565 |
List of unmanned aerial vehicles The following is a list of unmanned aerial vehicles developed and operated in various countries around the world. India is also planning to buy two troops (eight drones each) of IAI Heron from Israel.Under the Rs 1,200 crore contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Army will begin inducting these new Heron drones from January 2014. Also, India is developing UAVs that are capable of flying on solar power. Developed by DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation, New Delhi and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7375432 | 299,850 |
Engineering economics (civil engineering) The application of this specialized civil engineering knowledge can be in the form of engineering analyses of life-cycle cost, cost accounting, cost of capital and the economic feasibility of engineering solutions for design, construction and project management. The civil engineer must have the ability to use engineering economy methodologies for the “formulation of objectives, specification of alternatives, prediction of outcomes” and estimation of minimum acceptability for investment and optimization. They must also be capable of integrating these economic considerations into appropriate engineering solutions and management plans that predictably and reliably meet project stakeholder expectations in a sustainable manner. The civil engineering profession provides a special function in our society and economy where investing substantial sums of funding in public infrastructure requires "...some assurance that it will perform its intended function." Thus, the civil engineer exercising their professional judgment in making decisions about fundamental problems relies upon the profession's knowledge of engineering economics to provide "the practical certainty" that makes the social investment in public infrastructure feasible. Historically, coursework and curricula in engineering economics for civil engineers has focused on capital budgeting: "...when to replace capital equipment, and which of several alternative investments to make. On materials specific to civil engineering: For more generalized discussion: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58842024 | 194,842 |
Cogeneration A heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is a steam boiler that uses hot exhaust gases from the gas turbines or reciprocating engines in a CHP plant to heat up water and generate steam. The steam, in turn, drives a steam turbine or is used in industrial processes that require heat. HRSGs used in the CHP industry are distinguished from conventional steam generators by the following main features: Biomass is emerging as one of the most important sources of renewable energy. Biomass refers to any plant or animal matter in which it is possible to be reused as a source of heat or electricity, such as sugarcane, vegetable oils, wood, organic waste and residues from the food or agricultural industries. Brazil is now considered a world reference in terms of energy generation from biomass. A growing sector in the use of biomass for power generation is the sugar and alcohol sector, which mainly uses sugarcane bagasse as fuel for thermal and electric power generation In the sugarcane industry, cogeneration is fuelled by the bagasse residue of sugar refining, which is burned to produce steam. Some steam can be sent through a turbine that turns a generator, producing electric power. Energy cogeneration in sugarcane industries located in Brazil is a practice that has been growing in last years. With the adoption of energy cogeneration in the sugar and alcohol sector, the sugarcane industries are able to supply the electric energy demand needed to operate, and generate a surplus that can be commercialized | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=763555 | 388,870 |
Planck's law If supplemented by the classically unjustifiable assumption that for some reason the radiation is finite, classical thermodynamics provides an account of some aspects of the Planck distribution, such as the Stefan–Boltzmann law, and the Wien displacement law. For the case of the presence of matter, quantum mechanics provides a good account, as found below in the section headed Einstein coefficients. This was the case considered by Einstein, and is nowadays used for quantum optics. For the case of the absence of matter, quantum field theory is necessary, because non-relativistic quantum mechanics with fixed particle numbers does not provide a sufficient account. Quantum theoretical explanation of views the radiation as a gas of massless, uncharged, bosonic particles, namely photons, in thermodynamic equilibrium. Photons are viewed as the carriers of the electromagnetic interaction between electrically charged elementary particles. Photon numbers are not conserved. Photons are created or annihilated in the right numbers and with the right energies to fill the cavity with the Planck distribution. For a photon gas in thermodynamic equilibrium, the internal energy density is entirely determined by the temperature; moreover, the pressure is entirely determined by the internal energy density | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=191123 | 448,219 |
Railroad Tycoon II " "Railroad Tycoon II" became the first game published by Gathering of Developers to sell 1 million copies, and Geoff Keighley of "Computer Gaming World" declared it one of the publisher's few "certified hits." In the United States, the publisher's combined lifetime sales reached 1.3 million copies by October 2001, including the sales of "Railroad Tycoon II". Gathering of Developers president Mike Wilson believed that the game put his company on the map, at a time when others in the computer game industry doubted that an independent publisher could succeed. It was featured in G4 Icons' episode 12 Sid Meier as part of Sid's history with games and computers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3012034 | 482,799 |
CMV423 (2-Chloro-3-pyridin-3-yl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydroindolizine-1-carboxamide) is a lead antibiotic. 2-Chloro-3-pyridin-3-yl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydroindolizine-1-carboxamide (CMV423), a new lead compound for the treatment of human cytomegalovirus infections | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40313295 | 156,496 |
Judson S. Swearingen Dr. (January 11, 1907 – September 5, 1999) was a theoretician, hands-on manager, inventor and entrepreneur. He made major contributions to the technology of cryogenic expanders, compressors, and to the design of shaft seals for high-speed machinery. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas (UT) in 1933. Prior to joining the UT faculty in 1939 he was an entrepreneur and co-owned a small cracking plant and a natural gasoline plant. Swearingen was a member of the National Academy of Engineering beginning in 1977. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10249712 | 252,710 |
Interstellar formaldehyde The rate constant for the hydrogenation of HCO was not provided as it was much larger than that of the hydrogenation of CO, likely because HCO is a radical. Awad "et al." mention that this is a surface level reaction only and only the monolayer is considered in calculations; this includes the surface within cracks in the ice. Formaldehyde is relatively inactive in gas phase chemistry in the interstellar medium. Its action is predominantly focused in grain-surface chemistry on dust grains in interstellar clouds. Reactions involving formaldehyde have been observed to produce molecules containing C-H, C-O, O-H, and C-N bonds. While these products are not necessarily well known, Schutte "et al." believe these to be typical products of formaldehyde reactions at higher temperatures, polyoxymethylene, methanolamine, methanediol, and methoxyethanol for example (see Table 2). Formaldehyde is believed to be the primary precursor for most of the complex organic material in the interstellar medium, including amino acids. Formaldehyde most often reacts with NH, HO, CHOH, CO, and itself, HCO. The three dominating reactions are shown below. There is no kinetic data available for these reactions as the entire reaction is not verified nor well understood. These reactions are believed to take place during warm-up of the ice on grains which releases the molecules to react. These reactions begin at temperatures as low as 40K - 80K but may take place at even lower temperatures | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20000136 | 64,036 |
Dielectric spectroscopy Electronic polarization refers to the electron density and is a consequence of an applied field. Atomic polarization is usually small compared to electronic polarization. This originates from permanent and induced dipoles aligning to an electric field. Their orientation polarisation is disturbed by thermal noise (which mis-aligns the dipole vectors from the direction of the field), and the time needed for dipoles to relax is determined by the local viscosity. These two facts make dipole relaxation heavily dependent on temperature, pressure, and chemical surrounding. Ionic relaxation comprises ionic conductivity and interfacial and space charge relaxation. Ionic conductivity predominates at low frequencies and introduces only losses to the system. Interfacial relaxation occurs when charge carriers are trapped at interfaces of heterogeneous systems. A related effect is Maxwell-Wagner-Sillars polarization, where charge carriers blocked at inner dielectric boundary layers (on the mesoscopic scale) or external electrodes (on a macroscopic scale) lead to a separation of charges. The charges may be separated by a considerable distance and therefore make contributions to the dielectric loss that are orders of magnitude larger than the response due to molecular fluctuations. Dielectric relaxation as a whole is the result of the movement of dipoles (dipole relaxation) and electric charges (ionic relaxation) due to an applied alternating field, and is usually observed in the frequency range 10-10 Hz | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1894582 | 95,264 |
Computer It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both 5 times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls". It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7878457 | 288,345 |
Flexible electronics Single sided flex circuits can be fabricated with or without such protective coatings as cover layers or cover coats, however the use of a protective coating over circuits is the most common practice. The development of surface mounted devices on sputtered conductive films has enabled the production of transparent LED Films, which is used in LED Glass but also in flexible automotive lighting composites. Double access flex, also known as back bared flex, are flexible circuits having a single conductor layer but which is processed so as to allow access to selected features of the conductor pattern from both sides. While this type of circuit has certain benefits, the specialized processing requirements for accessing the features limits its use. Sculptured flex circuits are a novel subset of normal flexible circuit structures. The manufacturing process involves a special flex circuit multi-step etching method which yields a flexible circuit having finished copper conductors wherein the thickness of the conductor differs at various places along their length. (i.e., the conductors are thin in flexible areas and thick at interconnection points.). Double-sided flex circuits are flex circuits having two conductor layers. These flex circuits can be fabricated with or without plated through holes, though the plated through hole variation is much more common | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=251874 | 238,208 |
Limit state design 4) than highly variable loads like earthquake, wind, or live (occupancy) loads (1.6). Impact loads are typically given higher factors still (say 2.0) in order to account for both their unpredictable magnitudes and the dynamic nature of the loading vs. the static nature of most models. While arguably not philosophically superior to permissible or allowable stress design, it does have the potential to produce a more consistently designed structure as each element is intended to have the same probability of failure. In practical terms this normally results in a more efficient structure, and as such, it can be argued that LSD is superior from a practical engineering viewpoint. The following is the treatment of LSD found in the National Building Code of Canada: has replaced the older concept of permissible stress design in most forms of civil engineering. A notable exception is transportation engineering. Even so, new codes are currently being developed for both geotechnical and transportation engineering which are LSD based. As a result, most modern buildings are designed in accordance with a code which is based on limit state theory. For example, in Europe, structures are designed to conform with the Eurocodes: Steel structures are designed in accordance with EN 1993, and reinforced concrete structures to EN 1992. Australia, Canada, China, France, Indonesia, and New Zealand (among many others) utilise limit state theory in the development of their design codes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=352354 | 308,880 |
Cre-Lox recombination Inducible Cre activation is achieved using CreER (estrogen receptor) variant, which is only activated after delivery of tamoxifen. This is done through the fusion of a mutated ligand binding domain of the estrogen receptor to the Cre recombinase, resulting in Cre becoming specifically activated by tamoxifen. In the absence of tamoxifen, CreER will result in the shuttling of the mutated recombinase into the cytoplasm. The protein will stay in this location in its inactivate state until tamoxifen is given. Once tamoxifen is introduced, it is metabolized into 4-hydroxytamoxifen, which then binds to the ER and results in the translocation of the CreER into the nucleus, where it is then able to cleave the lox sites. Importantly, sometimes fluorescent reporters can be activated in the absence of tamoxifen, due to leakage of a few Cre recombinase molecules into the nucleus which, in combination with very sensitive reporters, results in unintended cell labelling. CreER(T2) was developed to minimize tamoxifen-independent recombination and maximize tamoxifen-sensitivity. Cells alter their phenotype in response to numerous environmental stimuli and can loose the expression of genes typically used to mark their identity, making it difficult to research the contribution of certain cell types to disease | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4363576 | 142,993 |
The WB 4 million viewers in October 2001. At the start of the 1998–99 season, the network expanded its programming to Thursday nights. That season, "7th Heaven" overtook "Dawson's Creek" as the network's highest-rated program, and garnered the highest ratings it would ever see – the show's February 8, 1999 episode attracted 12.5 million viewers. For the 1999–2000 season, the network concluded its primetime expansion with the addition of programming on Friday nights. New shows that season included "Roswell", "Popular", and the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spin-off "Angel", the latter of which premiered with 7.5 million viewers – the second-highest rated premiere for the network at the time. During this season, was the only network to have gains in its total audience viewership and in each key demographic. As the teen boom of the late 1990s began to wane, attempted to broaden the scope of its primetime lineup. Although teen-oriented fare like "Popular" and "Roswell" had premiered to strong ratings, both series saw serious ratings erosion in their sophomore seasons, leading the network to cancel them both ("Roswell", like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", would end up being revived by rival network UPN). Meanwhile, even though ratings for "7th Heaven", "Buffy" and "Charmed" remained consistent, viewership for flagship series such as "Felicity" and "Dawson's Creek" began sagging | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=178240 | 492,936 |
Lex Luthor The War Department later asked for dailies of the "Superman" comic strip to be pulled in April 1945 which depicted bombarding Superman with the radiation from a cyclotron. Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy No. 59 (Sept. 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions. He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley. Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank and stops him. In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time Luthor gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an archenemy. In the origin story printed in "Adventure Comics" No. 271 (April 1960), young is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with kryptonite. In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life-form, which Luthor loved as if it were his own child. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18595 | 48,586 |
Defamation In some systems, however, notably the Philippines, truth alone is not a defense. It is also necessary in these cases to show that there is a well-founded public interest in the specific information being widely known, and this may be the case even for public figures. Public interest is generally not "what the public is interested in", but rather "what is in the interest of the public". "Noonan v. Staples" is sometimes cited as precedent that truth is not always a defense to libel in the U.S., but the case is actually not valid precedent on that issue because Staples did not argue First Amendment protection, which is one theory for truth as complete defense, for its statements. The court assumed in this case that the Massachusetts law was constitutional under the First Amendment without it being argued by the parties. In a 2012 ruling involving Philippine libel law, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights commented, "Penal defamation laws should include defense of truth." Privilege provides a complete bar and answer to a defamation suit, though conditions may have to be met before this protection is granted. Privilege is any circumstance that justifies or excuses a prima facie tort. It can be said that privilege recognizes a defendant's action stemmed from an interest of social importance – and that society wants to protect such interests by not punishing those who pursue them. Privilege can be argued whenever a defendant can show that he acted from a justifiable motive | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28661 | 471,421 |
Mikron Group (), headed by JSC Mikron, is one of the largest manufacturers and exporters of microelectronics in Russia and the CIS. Its facilities are located in Zelenograd, Russia. During the period from 1960–1980 Mikron actively developed microelectronic technologies for the USSR. In 2010, Mikron obtained a license for a 90 nm process, with production starting around 2012–2013. The 90 nm production facilities and the design center were co-financed almost up to 50% by Rusnano, with a total cost of 16,57 billion Russian rubles. In 2014, due to the suspension of activities between Visa, MasterCard and certain Russian banks, Mikron hoped to receive orders related to the creation of the Russian national card payment system to be launched in 2015. In late 2014 it was announced that Mikron had started pilot production of a domestic microprocessor called Elbrus-2SM using a 90 nm process under the import substitution program in Russia. Domestic production of the Elbrus-2SM microprocessor was selected by the readers of the technical magazine CNews as the most significant event of 2014, while the creation of a national card payment system ranked at number 3 on the list. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44926227 | 229,798 |
Solomon Roadhouse The Solomon Roadhouse, also known as the Curran's Roadhouse, is a historic travel accommodation in northwestern Arctic Alaska. It is a two-story frame building located a short way north of the small community of Solomon, which is at the mouth of the Solomon River about east of Nome on the Nome-Council Highway. The roadhouse was built in 1904, during the days of the Nome Gold Rush, which brought many miners to the Solomon River as well, resulting in the establishment of the communities of Solomon and Dickson, and the construction of a railroad. After the gold rush declined and the communities were devastated by storms and floods, the roadhouse and other buildings were relocated about a mile north of the coast in the 1930s. The roadhouse operated until the 1970s. The roadhouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45715561 | 361,794 |
Fooya (styled as fooya!) is a medical mobile app which uses gamification of learning and educational entertainment principles to induce children to improve their dietary choices. It was developed by the mHealth company FriendsLearn and was featured as a case study of cutting-edge research methods in areas of emerging technology, during the 2018 International Summit on Social and Behavior Change Communication by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, UNICEF and BBC. uses artificial intelligence in the area of non-communicable disease prevention through technology, known as Digital Vaccines based on neuroscience and cognitive science. In January 2019, Carnegie Mellon University published about ongoing research and global clinical trials involving fooya, as the lead story along with their annual summary of scientific advances "2018 - Year in Review" with independent researchers describing the advances as "a powerful push forward in disease prevention technology". Studies have shown that is able to induce children and young adults to improve their dietary choices for overall positive effects on their health | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45063760 | 475,406 |
Potash In 1943, potash was discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada, in the process of drilling for oil. Active exploration began in 1951. In 1958, the Company of America became the first potash producer in Canada with the commissioning of an underground potash mine at Patience Lake; however, due to water seepage in its shaft, production stopped late in 1959 but following extensive grouting and repairs, resumed in 1965. The underground mine was flooded in 1987 and was reactivated for commercial production as a solution mine in 1989. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, potash production provided settlers in North America a way to obtain badly needed cash and credit as they cleared wooded land for crops. To make full use of their land, settlers needed to dispose of excess wood. The easiest way to accomplish this was to burn any wood not needed for fuel or construction. Ashes from hardwood trees could then be used to make lye, which could either be used to make soap or boiled down to produce valuable potash. Hardwood could generate ashes at the rate of 60 to 100 bushels per acre (500 to 900 m³/km²). In 1790, ashes could be sold for $3.25 to $6.25 per acre ($800 to $1,500/km²) in rural New York State – nearly the same rate as hiring a laborer to clear the same area. making became a major industry in British North America. Great Britain was always the most important market. The American potash industry followed the woodsman's ax across the country | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56509 | 58,890 |
Operations management With the coming of the Internet, in 1994 Amazon devised a service system of on-line retailing and distribution. With this innovative system customers were able to search for products they might like to buy, enter the order for the product, pay online, and track delivery of the product to their location, all in two days. This required not only very large computer operations, but dispersed warehouses, and an efficient transportation system. Service to customers including a high merchandise assortment, return services of purchases, and fast delivery is at the forefront of this business. It is the customer being in the system during the production and delivery of the service that distinguishes all services from manufacturing. Recent trends in the field revolve around concepts such as: A production system comprises both the technological elements (machines and tools) and organizational behavior (division of labor and information flow). An individual production system is usually analyzed in the literature referring to a single business, therefore it's usually improper to include in a given production system the operations necessary to process goods that are obtained by purchasing or the operations carried by the customer on the sold products, the reason being simply that since businesses need to design their own production systems this then becomes the focus of analysis, modeling and decision making (also called "configuring" a production system) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1993994 | 461,149 |
Rail transport This allows lower operating costs, but requires large capital investments along the lines. Mainline and tram systems normally have overhead wires, which hang from poles along the line. Grade-separated rapid transit sometimes use a ground third rail. Power may be fed as direct (DC) or alternating current (AC). The most common DC voltages are 600 and 750 V for tram and rapid transit systems, and 1,500 and 3,000 V for mainlines. The two dominant AC systems are 15 kV and 25 kV. A railway station serves as an area where passengers can board and alight from trains. A goods station is a yard which is exclusively used for loading and unloading cargo. Large passenger stations have at least one building providing conveniences for passengers, such as purchasing tickets and food. Smaller stations typically only consist of a platform. Early stations were sometimes built with both passenger and goods facilities. Platforms are used to allow easy access to the trains, and are connected to each other via underpasses, footbridges and level crossings. Some large stations are built as culs-de-sac, with trains only operating out from one direction. Smaller stations normally serve local residential areas, and may have connection to feeder bus services. Large stations, in particular central stations, serve as the main public transport hub for the city, and have transfer available between rail services, and to rapid transit, tram or bus services | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25715 | 330,488 |
Photoconductive atomic force microscopy Some of the attributes which make OPVs such a promising candidate to solve this problem include their low-cost of production, throughput, ruggedness, and their chemically tunable electric properties along with significant reduction in the production of greenhouse gases. For decades, the researchers have believed that the maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) would most likely remain below 0.1%. Only in 1979 Tang reported a two-layer, thin-film PV device, which ultimately yielded a power conversion efficiency of 1%. Tang’s research was published in 1986, which allowed others to decipher many of the problems which limited the basic understanding of the process involved in the OPVs. In later years, the majority of the research focused on the composite blend of poly(3-hexylthiopehene) (P3HT) and phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). This, along with the research performed on fullerenes, dictated the majority of studies pertaining to OPV for many years. In more recent research, polymer-based bulk heterojunction solar cells, along with low band-gap donor-acceptor copolymers have been created for PCBM-based OPV devices. These low band-gap donor-acceptor copolymers are able to absorb a higher percentage of the solar spectrum as compared to other high efficiency polymers. These copolymers have been widely researched due to their ability to be tuned for specific optical and electrical properties. To date, the best OPV devices have a maximum power conversion efficiency of approximately 8.13% | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31698140 | 31,934 |
Enten controversy The involved Kazutsugi Nami, the chairman of Tokyo bedding supplier Ladies & Gentlemen (L&G), arrested by Japanese police on 5 February 2009. He and twenty-one other executives were accused of defrauding 37,000 investors of at least 126 billion yen (approximately US$1.4 billion) between 2001 and 2009. Nami is the inventor of a quasi-currency, "Enten", which he used to attract investors. Some sources put the total amount of the money involved as high as 226 billion yen, which would make it, if proven, to be the biggest investment fraud in Japanese history since Toyota Shoji, an investment group, defrauded investors of 202.5 billion yen in the late '80s. In order to gain credibility and popularity, Nami's company used famous enka singers such as Takashi Hosokawa in their advertisements. In May 2008, Hosokawa was accused on the Japanese civil court for participating, but he insisted that he was not responsible for the content of their advertisement. Ladies and Gentlemen, set up in 1987, originally sold futons and health food, and began accepting investment money in 2001. The company's established existence tricked many into believing it was stable. A 65-year-old woman who lost 30 million yen (about US$300,000) saved over four decades was quoted as saying: "I thought the company was fine as it was in business for a long time". Another woman, a 70-year-old who blamed herself for the loss of two million yen (about US$20,000), said: "I had fun and a lively life ... I was stupid. It's my fault as I was greedy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21408988 | 451,560 |
Zveno (Soviet collective farming) The zveno (, "link"; plural: "zvenya") was a small grassroots work-group within Soviet collective farms. It was, or became, a subunit within the collective-farm brigade. From the earliest times, brigades had been subdivided into groups for carrying out some or all of their tasks. These subgroups were originally known by a variety of names, but by 1933 the label "zveno" had become standard in field-work brigades. Like the early brigades themselves, the zvenya could be temporary, specializing in one particular job (ploughing, harrowing, sowing, harvesting etc.), or fixed for some period of time. The latter would embrace a number of related tasks, and probably have land plots fixed for the period of their work. They could also specialize in a single crop or handle a number of cultures. The mass methods of work favoured at the beginning of collectivization were rapidly found to be inefficient. A huge column of ploughs simultaneously tilling a field might appear a glamorous example of large-scale socialist agriculture. But if just one plough broke down, the work-pattern of the whole column was disrupted. Also, in large brigades, accounting was complicated and supervision difficult. The favoured size of the primary working unit progressively shrank. As early as March 1930 columns of 15-20 ploughs were acknowledged to be more efficient than those with 70. By the beginning of 1933 even this scale of work was a rarity. By this time "mass work" came in the shape of zvenya of 3-5 horse-drawn "machines" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14744676 | 492,231 |
Human iron metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that maintain human homeostasis of iron at the systemic and cellular level. Iron is both necessary to the body and potentially toxic. Controlling iron levels in the body is a critically important part of many aspects of human health and disease. Hematologists have been especially interested in systemic iron metabolism because iron is essential for red blood cells, where most of the human body's iron is contained. Understanding iron metabolism is also important for understanding diseases of iron overload, such as hereditary hemochromatosis, and iron deficiency, such as iron deficiency anemia. Iron is an essential bioelement for most forms of life, from bacteria to mammals. Its importance lies in its ability to mediate electron transfer. In the ferrous state, iron acts as an electron donor, while in the ferric state it acts as an acceptor. Thus, iron plays a vital role in the catalysis of enzymatic reactions that involve electron transfer (reduction and oxidation, redox). Proteins can contain iron as part of different cofactors, such as iron-sulfur clusters (Fe-S) and heme groups, both of which are assembled in mitochondria. Human cells require iron in order to obtain energy as ATP from a multi-step process known as cellular respiration, more specifically from oxidative phosphorylation at the mitochondrial cristae | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3335116 | 60,799 |
Building information modeling Lithuania is moving towards adoption of BIM infrastructure by founding a public body "Skaitmeninė statyba" (Digital Construction), which is managed by 13 associations. Also, there is a BIM work group established by Lietuvos Architektų Sąjunga (a Lithuanian architects body). The initiative intends Lithuania to adopt BIM, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and National Construction Classification as standard. An international conference "Skaitmeninė statyba Lietuvoje" (Digital Construction in Lithuania) has been held annually since 2012. On 1 November 2011, the Rijksgebouwendienst, the agency within the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment that manages government buildings, introduced the Rgd BIM Standard, which it updated on 1 July 2012. In Norway BIM has been used increasingly since 2008. Several large public clients require use of BIM in open formats (IFC) in most or all of their projects. The Government Building Authority bases its processes on BIM in open formats to increase process speed and quality, and all large and several small and medium-sized contractors use BIM. National BIM development is centred around the local organisation, buildingSMART Norway which represents 25% of the Norwegian construction industry. BIMKlaster (BIM Cluster) is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation established in 2012 with the aim of promoting BIM development in Poland | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3978080 | 366,050 |
Wien bridge oscillator The conventional oscillator circuit is designed so that it will start oscillating ("start up") and that its amplitude will be controlled. The oscillator at the right uses diodes to add a controlled compression to the amplifier output. It can produce total harmonic distortion in the range of 1-5%, depending on how carefully it is trimmed. For a linear circuit to oscillate, it must meet the Barkhausen conditions: its loop gain must be one and the phase around the loop must be an integer multiple of 360 degrees. The linear oscillator theory doesn't address how the oscillator starts up or how the amplitude is determined. The linear oscillator can support any amplitude. In practice, the loop gain is initially larger than unity. Random noise is present in all circuits, and some of that noise will be near the desired frequency. A loop gain greater than one allows the amplitude of frequency to increase exponentially each time around the loop. With a loop gain greater than one, the oscillator will start. Ideally, the loop gain needs to be just a little bigger than one, but in practice, it is often significantly greater than one. A larger loop gain makes the oscillator start quickly. A large loop gain also compensates for gain variations with temperature and the desired frequency of a tunable oscillator. For the oscillator to start, the loop gain must be greater than one under all possible conditions. A loop gain greater than one has a down side. In theory, the oscillator amplitude will increase without limit | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1531173 | 400,835 |
Rydberg polaron The new state of matter was predicted by theorists at Harvard University in 2016 and confirmed in 2018 by spectroscopy in an experiment using a strontium Bose–Einstein condensate. Theoretically, up to 170 ordinary strontium atoms could fit closely inside the new orbital of the Rydberg atom, depending on the radius of the Rydberg atom and the density of the Bose–Einstein condensate. The theoretical work for the experiment was performed by theorists at Vienna University of Technology and Harvard University, while the actual experiment and observation took place at Rice University in Houston, Texas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56710028 | 87,935 |
WolfQuest Also in development, new episode/map called Tower Fall which will continue life with pups. The Tower Fall expansion will be an in-game purchase (DLC) and released after WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18409681 | 140,045 |
CEN/TC 125 (CEN Technical Committee 125) is a technical decision making body within the CEN system working on standardization in the field of Masonry, including natural stone, in the European Union. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8098634 | 356,805 |
List of International Electrotechnical Commission standards This is an incomplete list of standards published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The numbers of older IEC standards were converted in 1997 by adding 60000; for example IEC 27 became IEC 60027. IEC standards often have multiple sub-part documents; only the main title for the standard is listed here. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=463506 | 377,380 |
Social learning tools Some research has shown that disruption to the learning process can significantly affect a student's ability to retain information into their long-term memory. Educators should be made aware of the potential risk for technology to be a distraction and set clear guidelines for their students to follow. As the use of technology increases, cyberbullying is becoming more prevalent among students. Although social learning tools give students the ability to interact with teachers and peers, it also provides them with the opportunity to bully others online. This type of malicious behaviour can be seen at every level of education, including college campuses. Educators should plan to intervene on any incidents of cyberbullying that they witness in order to prevent more serious offences. They should also encourage respectful and positive behaviours towards peers when in the classroom and online. There is much speculation about whether or not social learning tools can provide enough opportunity for the development of real-life social skills. Some educators are concerned that students will not fully develop the ability to communicate effectively or command attention if they are constantly learning through a screen. Although social learning tools create opportunities for students to interact with others via web interfaces, it does not offer them authentic real-life interactions where students are forced to express themselves verbally or connect with others face-to-face | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25213924 | 243,519 |
Narrandera Showground Industrial Hall Following an application to the Minister for Lands, the Narrandera Pastoral and Agricultural Association was granted a site of six ha (15 acres) as a showground. The land was dedicated on 16 March 1883, a further 3.6 ha (nine acres) being added on 14 November 1893, and another four ha (10 acres) on 12 August 1903, making a total of 13.75 ha (34 acres). The economic depression of the 1890s was followed by drought across eastern Australia. The King Drought of 1895-1903 was the most prolonged since European settlement, its worst year being 1902-03. The "Narrandera Argus" noted in 1902 that local stock numbers for horses, cattle and sheep had plummeted between 1901 and 1902 and there was concern that the drought would have an adverse impact on the forthcoming 1902 show. The Argus commented: "It must be readily acknowledged that seasons such as the district has passed through must of necessity have a prejudicial effect upon all pastoral and agricultural products. But when it is an accepted fact that of late years those who managed to keep their stock alive are regarded as fortunate, and that few farmers have reaped any produce - even of an inferior quality - it is unreasonable to assume that a show following seven years of drought is properly representative of the fertility of the district". ('Narrandera Argus', January 30, 1902). Reporting on the 1902 show, the Narrandera Argus claimed that the 20th annual show was "Successful Beyond Anticipation | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57955133 | 316,764 |
E-society is a society that consists of one or more e-Communities involved in the areas "from e-Government, e-Democracy, and e-Business to e-Learning and e-Health", that use information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to achieve a common interests and goals. The first areas of e-society that emerged were e-Learning and e-Business. The development of e-Society is relying and depending on the development of virtual reality (VR) technologies that insure interaction between participants of an e-Society in a more acceptable and tangible way. The development of (VR) and consequently the e-Society is based on improvement and balancing of participants’ interaction methods, hardware necessary for such interaction, content presentation and effort required for development and maintenance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31349429 | 272,592 |
The Fisherman's Cot is an inn on the A3072 road to the northwest of Bickleigh near Tiverton, in northeastern Devon. It is operated by Marston's Inns and lies on the River Exe. Situated on the River Exe, the inn contains 21 rooms. Although the inn looks very old, it was only built in 1933 as a private fishing lodge for Bickleigh Castle, located nearby in the woods behind the inn. The English Inns website cites the inn as "one of the most picturesque inns in the southwest of England", given its quaint river setting and thatched roof. The most scenic rooms with river views are said to be Rooms 10 and 11. In 2008, the rooms were reported to cost £69.95 per night. also has a function room which is often used for meetings, evening events and wedding receptions. The inn has a carvery and is said to serve good-quality meat and fish dishes, such as herbed stuffed trout, mussels and Aberdeen Angus burgers. The inn is reported to have obtained the rights to fish a 3/4 mile stretch of the River Exe, providing the restaurant with an abundance of fresh fish to serve. The Waterside Bar of the inn overlooks the river and the bridge. The inn overlooks the medieval 16th-century Bickleigh Bridge which was said since the 1960s to have been the inspiration for the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Paul Simon stayed at in the 1960s whilst performing nearby in Exeter | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30050820 | 353,681 |
Stem cell This allowed the formation of murine genetic models, a system in which the genes of mice are deleted or altered in order to study their function in pathology. By 1998, embryonic stem cells were first isolated by American biologist James Thomson, which made it possible to have new transplantation methods or various cell types for testing new treatments. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka’s team in Kyoto, Japan converted fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells by modifying the expression of only four genes. The feat represents the origin of induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells. The classical definition of a stem cell requires that it possesses two properties: Two mechanisms ensure that a stem cell population is maintained (doesn't shrink in size): 1. Asymmetric cell division: a stem cell divides into one mother cell, which is identical to the original stem cell, and another daughter cell, which is differentiated. When a stem cell self-renews, it divides and does not disrupt the undifferentiated state. This self-renewal demands control of cell cycle as well as upkeep of multipotency or pluripotency, which all depends on the stem cell. 2. Stochastic differentiation: when one stem cell grows and divides into two differentiated daughter cells, another stem cell undergoes mitosis and produces two stem cells identical to the original. Stem cells use telomerase, a protein that restores telomeres, to protect their DNA and extend their cell division limit (the Hayflick limit) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27783 | 258,912 |
Smart pointer If a language supports automatic garbage collection (for example, Java or C#), then smart pointers are unneeded for the reclaiming and safety aspects of memory management, yet are useful for other purposes, such as cache data structure residence management and resource management of objects such as file handles or network sockets. Even though C++ popularized the concept of smart pointers, especially the reference-counted variety, the immediate predecessor of one of the languages that inspired C++'s design had reference-counted references built into the language. C++ was inspired in part by Simula67. Simula67's ancestor was Simula I. Insofar as Simula I's "element" is analogous to C++'s pointer without "null", and insofar as Simula I's process with a dummy-statement as its activity body is analogous to C++'s "struct" (which itself is analogous to C.A.R. Hoare's "record" in then-contemporary 1960s work), Simula I had reference counted elements (i.e., pointer-expressions that house indirection) to processes (i.e., records) no later than September 1965, as shown in the quoted paragraphs below. Processes can be referenced individually. Physically, a process reference is a pointer to an area of memory containing the data local to the process and some additional information defining its current state of execution. However, for reasons stated in the Section 2.2 process references are always indirect, through items called "elements." Formally a reference to a process is the value of an expression of type "element" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=319861 | 111,106 |
Inoculation needle An inoculation needle is a laboratory equipment used in the field of microbiology to transfer and inoculate living microorganisms. It is one of the most commonly implicated biological laboratory tools and can be disposable or re-usable. A standard reusable inoculation needle is made from nichrome or platinum wire affixed to a metallic handle. A disposable inoculation needle is often made from plastic resin. The base of the needle is dulled, resulting in a blunted end. Inoculation needles are primarily applied in microbiology for studying bacteria and fungi on semi-solid media. Biotechnology, cell biology and immunology may also utilize needle-oriented culture methods. The application of inoculation needles focuses on the inoculation and isolation of very defined regions of the cultures and the requirements of least disturbance between two closely crowded microbial colonies. It can also be used in harpooning under a low magnification microscope. Streaking on streak plates, fish tail inoculation of slant cultures and the inoculation of stab cultures can be done with the inoculation needle. Stab cultures specifically require the inoculation needle and is used to study cell motility, microbial oxygen requirements using Thioglycolate cultures, and the gelatin liquefaction of bacteria. The inoculation needle is sterilized using the aseptic technique | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51725837 | 186,411 |
Louis W. Harris House The Louis W. Harris House, at 55 E. 200 North in Beaver, Utah, was built in 1905. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It was built by stonemason Louis W. Harris for himself and his family. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61524535 | 315,948 |
Livermorium While the known isotopes of livermorium do not actually have enough neutrons to be on the island of stability, they can be seen to approach the island, as the heavier isotopes are generally the longer-lived ones. Superheavy elements are produced by nuclear fusion. These fusion reactions can be divided into "hot" and "cold" fusion, depending on the excitation energy of the compound nucleus produced. In hot fusion reactions, very light, high-energy projectiles are accelerated toward very heavy targets (actinides), giving rise to compound nuclei at high excitation energy (~40–50 MeV) that may either fission or evaporate several (3 to 5) neutrons. In cold fusion reactions (which use heavier projectiles, typically from the fourth period, and lighter targets, usually lead and bismuth), the produced fused nuclei have a relatively low excitation energy (~10–20 MeV), which decreases the probability that these products will undergo fission reactions. As the fused nuclei cool to the ground state, they require emission of only one or two neutrons. Hot fusion reactions tend to produce more neutron-rich products because the actinides have the highest neutron-to-proton ratios of any elements that can presently be made in macroscopic quantities. Important information could be gained regarding the properties of superheavy nuclei by the synthesis of more livermorium isotopes, specifically those with a few neutrons more or less than the known ones – Lv, Lv, Lv, Lv, Lv, and Lv | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62198 | 69,318 |
Beech Hill Park Around 1921, the house and estate were purchased from the estate of Charles Jack by a consortium of Hadley Wood residents led by Walter Warwick and his brother-in-law Sir Frederick Lewis (later Lord Essendon). The main house was converted into a club house according to plans by the architect Cyril Wontner-Smith who also bought one of the buildings in the grounds which he converted into a home for himself. The golf club opened in 1922 with a course designed by Alister MacKenzie. The house is grade II listed with Historic England. The stable range nearby is also listed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47459294 | 354,557 |
Historical ecology Many invasive species originate in shipping areas from where they are unintentionally transported to their new location. Sometimes human populations intentionally introduce species into new landscapes to serve various purposes, ranging from decoration to erosion control. These species can later become invasive and dramatically modify the landscape. It is important to note that not all exotic species are invasive; in fact, the majority of newly introduced species never become invasive. Humans have on their migrations through the ages taken along plants of agricultural and medicinal value, so that the modern distribution of such favored species is a clear mapping of the routes they have traveled and the places they have settled. One example of an invasive species that has had a significant impact on the landscape is the gypsy moth ("Lymantria dispar"). The foliage-feeding gypsy moth is originally from temperate Eurasia; it was intentionally brought to the United States by an entomologist in 1869. Many specimens escaped from captivity and have since changed the ecology of deciduous and coniferous forests in North America by defoliation. This has led not only to the loss of wildlife habitat, but also other forest services, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling. After its initial introduction, the continued accidental transport of its larvae across North America has contributed to its population explosion | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1881089 | 173,126 |
Hydronic balancing Ideally, these flaws should be exposed while they can still be cheaply fixed. That is, before control equipment is commissioned, before ceilings are mounted, and most important, before tenants move in. After several years use, even the best-designed and best-built plants can suffer operational problems. A problem can have many causes: filters or valves may be clogged, terminal units and heat exchangers may have been replaced, a pipe may have been damaged during renovations, or a child's mischievous fingers may have left a shutoff valve half open. Balancing valves allow the measurement of differential pressure and temperature thereby pinpointing the cause of many such operational problems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26159716 | 448,861 |
Pico-ITXe is a PC Pico-ITX motherboard specification created by VIA Technologies and SFF-SIG. It was announced by VIA Technologies on October 29, 2008 and released in December 2008. The specifications call for the board to be , which is half the area of Nano-ITX, and 12 layers deep. The processor can be a VIA C7 that uses VIA's NanoBGA2 technology. It uses DDR2 667/533 SO-DIMM memory, with support for up to 2GB. Video is supplied by VIA's Chrome9 HC3 GPU with built-in MPEG-2, 4, WMV9, and VC1 decoding acceleration. The BIOS is a 4 or 8 Mbit Award BIOS. The first motherboard that was produced under this specification is called EPIA-P710. It was released in December 2008. It is and 12 layers deep. The operating temperature range is from 0°C to about 50°C. The operating humidity level (relative and non-condensing) can be from 0% to about 95%. It uses a 1 GHz VIA C7-M processor, a VIA VX800 chip set, and is RoHS compliant. It has onboard VGA video-out. Gigabit Ethernet is supplied by VIA's VT6122, but requires a connector board. HD 5.1 channel audio is provided by a VIA VT1708B chip. The following are the standard I/O connections: Up to four I/O expansion boards can be stacked upon each other using the SUMIT interface. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20309319 | 425,136 |
Hockney–Falco thesis As well the 1929 "Encyclopædia Britannica" contains an extensive article on the camera obscura and cites Leon Battista Alberti as the first documented user of the device as early as 1437. Ihde states abundant evidence for widespread use of various technical devices at least in the Renaissance and e.g. in Early Netherlands painting. Jan van Eyck's 1434 painting "Arnolfini Portrait" shows a convex mirror in the centre of the painting. Van Eyck also left his signature above this mirror, showing the importance of the tool. The painting includes a crown glass window in the upper left side, a rather expensive luxury at the time. Van Eyck was rather fascinated by glass and its qualities, which was as well of high symbolic importance for his contemporaries. Early optical instruments were comparatively expensive in the Medieval age and the Renaissance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10082768 | 266,185 |
Clonogenic assay The cells either come from prepared "cell lines," which have been well-studied and whose general characteristics are known, or from a biopsy of a tumor in a patient. The cells are put in petri dishes or in plates which contain several circular "wells." Particular numbers of cells are plated depending on the experiment; for an experiment involving irradiation it is usual to plate larger numbers of cells with increasing dose of radiation. For example, at a dose of 0 or 1 gray of radiation, 500 cells might be plated, but at 4 or 5 gray, 2500 might be plated, since very large numbers of cells are killed at this level of radiation and the effects of the specific treatment would be unobservable. Counting the cell colonies is usually done under a microscope and is quite tedious. Recently, machines have been developed that use algorithms to analyse images. These are either captured by an image scanner or an automated microscope that can completely automate the counting process. One such automated machine works by accepting certain types of cell plates through a slot (not unlike a CD player), taking a photograph, and uploading it to a computer for immediate analysis. Reliable counts are available in seconds. The treatment is usually a drug, ionizing radiation, or a combination of the two | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=532846 | 25,825 |
Allan Matthews FREng FIMMM FIMechE FIET FIMF is Professor of Surface Engineering and Tribology at The University of Manchester and Director of the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials. Matthews attended Upholland Grammar School and completed his PhD at Salford University studying environmentally-friendly plasma-based processes, especially their use for coating industrial tools. Matthews spent his early career in the UK Aerospace Industry, first with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and then British Aerospace Dynamics Group. He is known as an early pioneer of the discipline of Surface Engineering, having founded a laboratory to research that subject at Hull University in 1982, where he established and directed the Research Centre in Surface Engineering. He and his research group led significant breakthroughs in plasma-assisted processes for surface treatment and coatings, in particular in thermionically-enhanced plasma processes for nitrogen and carbon-diffusion treatments of steels and titanium alloys, as well as oxide and nitride coatings to act as wear and heat-resisting barriers on cutting tools and aero-engine parts. In 2002, he was invited to join the Department of Engineering Materials at The University of Sheffield. There he continued research in plasma-based surface engineering and helped establish (and was Executive Director of) the Leonardo Centre for Tribology and Surface Technology, which was made possible through a benefaction by Dr. Peter Jost | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60210095 | 451,096 |
Alignment level The alignment level in an audio signal chain or on an audio recording is a defined anchor point that represents a reasonable or typical level. It does not represent a particular sound level or signal level or digital representation, but it can be defined as corresponding to particular levels in each of these domains. For example, alignment level is commonly 0 dBu (Equal to 0.775 Volts RMS) in broadcast chains and in professional audio what is commonly known as "0VU", which is +4dBu (Equal to 1.227 Volts RMS) in places where the signal exists as analogue voltage. Under normal situations the "0VU" reference allowed for a headroom of 18dB or more above the reference level without significant distortion. This is largely due to the use of slow responding VU meters in almost all analog professional audio equipment which, by their design, and by specification responded to an average level, not peak levels. It most commonly is at −18 dB FS (18 dB below full scale digital) on digital recordings for programme exchange, in accordance with EBU recommendations. Digital equipment must use peak reading metering systems to avoid severe digital distortion caused by the signal going beyond 'full scale' or maximum digital levels. 24-bit original or master recordings commonly have alignment level at −24 dB FS to allow extra headroom, which can then be reduced to match the available headroom of the final medium by audio level compression | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4557961 | 411,109 |
Enterprise legal management Several factors led to a shift away from traditional, low-technology solutions and toward ELM, most notably the expansion of the Internet during the 1990s and subsequent development of Software as a service (SaaS) platforms. Within legal departments, factors included greater regulatory compliance risk, smaller budgets, and board member demands for greater accountability, predictability, and transparency. Over time, the demand for budgetary information, including metrics such as the ratio of legal spend to total enterprise revenue, extended beyond board members to include other stakeholders. Corporate legal departments were positioned as the next frontier of corporate efficiency and risk management, and encouraged to operate as a true business partner. This created pressure to reduce costs and, when possible, generate revenue for the larger enterprise. Departments’ varied sizes and responsibilities created a range of practice management needs. A legal department with a small number of in-house attorneys might oversee thousands of cases managed by outside counsel, while a large internal legal department could handle most cases in-house. Smaller departments focused on management of workflow, collaboration, and spend management; larger departments had greater needs for internal matter management, attorney utilization, and document management. The first electronic transitions were to generic matter management applications, which replaced paper files as the system of record | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47238886 | 231,722 |
Valmont Industries Valmont Industries, Inc. () is a large, publicly held American manufacturer of Valley center pivot and linear irrigation equipment, windmill support structures, lighting and traffic poles and steel utility poles. Their corporate office, main plant and aviation department is in Omaha. Valmont has many worldwide locations including China and Europe. The company name likely comes from a combination of the names of two nearby towns, Fremont and Valley. Mogens Bay was appointed Head Chairman and C.E.O. following the retirement of founder Robert Daugherty in 2004. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3920419 | 506,223 |
N-Hash In cryptography, is a cryptographic hash function based on the FEAL round function, and is now considered insecure. It was proposed in 1990 by Miyaguchi et al.; weaknesses were published the following year. has a 128-bit hash size. A message is divided into 128-bit blocks, and each block is combined with the hash value computed so far using the "g" compression function. "g" contains eight rounds, each of which uses an "F" function, similar to the one used by FEAL. Eli Biham and Adi Shamir (1991) applied the technique of differential cryptanalysis to N-Hash, and showed that collisions could be generated faster than by a birthday attack for variants with even up to 12 rounds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1002247 | 118,884 |
Einselection Pointer states are the result of the interplay between self-evolution and interaction with the environment and turn out to be coherent states. There is also a quantum limit of decoherence: When the spacing between energy levels of the system is large compared to the frequencies present in the environment, energy eigenstates are einselected nearly independently of the nature of the system-environment coupling. There has been significant work on correctly identifying the pointer states in the case of a massive particle decohered by collisions with a fluid environment, often known as "collisional decoherence". In particular, Busse and Hornberger have identified certain solitonic wavepackets as being unusually stable in the presence of such decoherence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1100001 | 442,204 |
Trophallaxis The cuckoo bird uses mimicry, such as mimicking the eggshell colors and patterns of the host's eggs, to place their young in the nest of host species where they will be fed and reared at no expense to the cuckoo mother. The cuckoo young can often mimic the begging call of an entire nest of the host species' young and have evolved intensely colored gaits; both of which act as supernormal stimuli, inducing the host bird to deliver food to them over their own young via trophallaxis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=213731 | 151,968 |
Government incentives for plug-in electric vehicles The Portuguese Government launched in early 2008 a national Programme for Electric Mobility called Mobi.E. Mobi.E is deploying a national electric mobility system. The system was designed to be scalable and used in multiple geographies, overcoming the current situation of lack of communication among the different electric mobility experiences that are being deployed in Europe. By the first semester of 2011, a wide public network of 1 300 normal and 50 fast charging points will be fully implemented in the main 25 cities of the country. EVs are fully exempt from both the Vehicle Tax due upon purchase (Imposto Sobre Veículos) and the annual Circulation Tax (Imposto Único de Circulação). Personal income tax provides an allowance of EUR 803 upon the purchase of EVs. EVs are exempt from the 5%-10% company car tax rates which are part of the Corporation Income Tax. The Budget Law provides for an increase of the depreciation costs related to the purchase of EVs for the purpose of Corporation Income Tax. Portugal established a government subsidy of €5,000 for the first 5,000 new electric cars sold in the country. In addition, there is in place a €1,500 incentive if the consumer turns in a used car as part of the down payment for the new electric car. Electric cars are also exempt from the registration tax. , Romania offers a government grant of up to 25% of the price (up to a maximum of ) for the purchase of a new electric car | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30228134 | 382,097 |
Cellular model Creating a cellular model has been a particularly challenging task of systems biology and mathematical biology. It involves developing efficient algorithms, data structures, visualization and communication tools to orchestrate the integration of large quantities of biological data with the goal of computer modeling. It is also directly associated with bioinformatics, computational biology and Artificial life. It involves the use of computer simulations of the many cellular subsystems such as the networks of metabolites and enzymes which comprise metabolism, signal transduction pathways and gene regulatory networks to both analyze and visualize the complex connections of these cellular processes. The complex network of biochemical reaction/transport processes and their spatial organization make the development of a predictive model of a living cell a grand challenge for the 21st century. The eukaryotic cell cycle is very complex and is one of the most studied topics, since its misregulation leads to cancers. It is possibly a good example of a mathematical model as it deals with simple calculus but gives valid results. Two research groups have produced several models of the cell cycle simulating several organisms | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24044102 | 176,483 |
Jurisdictional arbitrage To counteract this phenomenon, most countries have signed bilateral extradition treaties with most other countries, and some governments adopted the principle of universal jurisdiction, which has enabled individuals to be prosecuted for offences (particularly alleged human rights violations and war crimes) committed outside the jurisdiction of prosecution – the legal structure of nations such as Belgium and Spain allow for this, as does that of international tribunals operating under the aegis of the United Nations. A similar attempt at governmental collusion to limit the use of jurisdictional arbitrage for tax avoidance is the policy of tax harmonization. The membership of European governments in the European Union resulted in a collection of nations with a limited set of common legal structures (Four Freedoms) which has resulted in tax competition by the otherwise less-developed nations (such as the Republic of Ireland in the early 1990s) whereby governments compete for foreign investment by lowering their tax rates significantly below those of their neighbours. This strategy has been adopted in the form of a flat tax by various Eastern European nations, which has resulted in calls for harmonization of tax rates by the traditionally more developed nations such as France, Britain and Germany. In the view of one journalist, Microsoft's satellite office in Vancouver was set up because the US Immigration and Naturalization Service was given to restrict the immigration of programmers | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16019354 | 492,757 |
Early widescreen feature filmography A widescreen aspect ratio was first seen in a movie in Paramount's "Old Ironsides" of 1926. A few years later in 1928 and '29, a fad broke out for such special features as widescreen and color. Color was the more common choice, being that it was projected the same as black and white while theaters needed wider screens and special lenses for their projectors to show widescreen movies. With the lack of a standard for widescreen aspect ratios, studios had to go to the expense of filming several versions of a widescreen movie to cover the more common kinds of projector lens. The first movie to combine the two was "Fox Movietone Follies of 1929", widescreen and partially in color. The next year there were two, "Song of the Flame" and "Kismet", which are today both lost films. By late 1930, however, most of the planned widescreen movies were shelved as studios began to feel the effects of The Great Depression and were forced to economize. In 1953, 20th Century Fox returned to the concept and began using the CinemaScope process to make widescreen movies, such as "How to Marry a Millionaire". Widescreen grew in popularity during the 1950s, and since 1960 nearly every American feature film has been widescreen. BW stands for "black and white". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26933787 | 228,549 |
Unscented transform Uhlmann and Simon Julier published several papers showing that the use of the unscented transformation in a Kalman filter, which is referred to as the unscented Kalman filter (UKF), provides significant performance improvements over the EKF in a variety of applications. Julier and Uhlmann published papers using a particular parameterized form of the unscented transform in the context of the UKF which used negative weights to capture assumed distribution information. That form of the UT is susceptible to a variety of numerical errors that the original formulations (the symmetric set originally proposed by Uhlmann) do not suffer. Julier has subsequently described parameterized forms which do not use negative weights and also are not subject to those issues. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33452725 | 378,599 |
C3orf14 The amino acid structure is highly conserved through mammals, and the secondary and tertiary structure is highly conserved in all orthologs, dating as far back as 1000 mya in the sea anemone. No orthologs have been found in plants or bacteria. Below is a phylogenetic tree generated in SDSC Biology Workbench showing protein similarity among species in which has been identified. This gene was first identified in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). The GEO and EST profiles in NCBI, indicate that its expression level varies from tissue to tissue; however its reported expression is 1.2 times that of the average gene. It has highest expression in the pancreas and nervous tissue (in humans). It is underexpressed in many cancer cell lines, however this may be due to its close proximity to the tumor suppressor gene FHIT, and the chromosomal fragile site FRBA3. Breakage at this site inactivates FHIT and can lead to the loss of C3orf14. Because is not ubiquitously expressed, it most likely is not a housekeeping gene. Instead, it more likely plays a role in the function of specific tissues. It seems likely then, that this gene is a transcription factor, which regulates the expression of other genes important for the function of tissues where this gene is expressed highest. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31718566 | 31,974 |
CCC Recreation Building-Nature Museum is a historic building located at McCormick's Creek State Park in Washington Township, Owen County, Indiana. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, and is a one-story, frame building with board-and-batten siding and American Craftsman style design elements. It consists of a rectangular hip roofed main section, with a gabled wing. The wing features a large stone fireplace. The building was rehabilitated for use as a nature museum by the Works Progress Administration in 1936, and remained in that use into the 1970s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50780314 | 326,292 |
Boiler (water heating) The term Boiler may refer to an appliance for heating water. Applications include water heating and central heating. The boiler heats water to a temperature controlled by a thermostat. The water then flows (either by natural circulation or by a pump) to radiators in the rooms which are to be heated. Water also flows through a coil in the hot water tank to heat a separate mass of water for bathing, etc. A back boiler is a device which is fitted to a residential heating stove or open fireplace to enable it to provide both room heat and domestic hot water or central heating. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45231593 | 361,351 |
Quantum economics also stresses the importance of financial transactions and in particular the role of money as an active force in the economy, for example in the way that it entangles debtors and creditors through loans. can therefore be viewed as an alternative to neoclassical economics which begins from a different set of assumptions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54053583 | 505,141 |
Eugene Porter In the mid-season premiere "No Way Out", Eugene helps kill the remaining herd, showing his growing acts of bravery. In the episode "Twice as Far", Eugene now goes on patrols with Abraham. He calls himself a survivor now. Eugene is furious after Abraham does not allow him to kill a walker and tells Abraham he no longer needs his protection and has outlived his usefulness to him. Abraham leaves and tells Eugene to find his own way home. After Denise is killed by Dwight, it is revealed that he and his men have captured Eugene. Dwight demands that he, Daryl and Rosita take them back to Alexandria and if they do not oblige, he will kill them. Eugene spots Abraham hiding behind oil barrels nearby and insists that they should kill him first. Dwight orders one of his men to investigate, and while he is distracted Eugene turns and bites his crotch. Abraham uses the distraction to shoot two Saviors, and Daryl and Rosita are able to retrieve their guns. Dwight manages to break free from Eugene, who is hit during the shootout. As Dwight and the remaining Saviors flee, Abraham, Rosita and Daryl carry Eugene back to Alexandria. Abraham reconciles with Eugene at home. In the season finale "Last Day on Earth", Eugene accompanies a small group to bring an ill Maggie to the Hilltop. The Saviors trap the group and Negan kills one of them after a twisted variation of the game, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40783475 | 222,153 |
Technological unemployment In 2013, professor Nick Bloom of Stanford University stated there had recently been a major change of heart concerning technological unemployment among his fellow economists. In 2014 the Financial Times reported that the impact of innovation on jobs has been a dominant theme in recent economic discussion. According to the academic and former politician Michael Ignatieff writing in 2014, questions concerning the effects of technological change have been "haunting democratic politics everywhere". Concerns have included evidence showing worldwide falls in employment across sectors such as manufacturing; falls in pay for low and medium skilled workers stretching back several decades even as productivity continues to rise; the increase in often precarious platform mediated employment; and the occurrence of "jobless recoveries" after recent recessions. The 21st century has seen a variety of skilled tasks partially taken over by machines, including translation, legal research and even low level journalism. Care work, entertainment, and other tasks requiring empathy, previously thought safe from automation, have also begun to be performed by robots. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard economics professor Lawrence Summers stated in 2014 that he no longer believed automation would always create new jobs and that "This isn't some hypothetical future possibility. This is something that's emerging before us right now." Summers noted that already, more labor sectors were losing jobs than creating new ones | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32040137 | 382,701 |
Protector lock The Protector Lock was distinct from Hobbs's other major lock design of the time, which he called the "American lock", and which slightly preceded the protector lock, in various ways; while the "American lock" was complicated to use, and expensive to purchase, with the added disadvantage of requiring a very big key, it did not differ greatly from the so far as the security it offered, and the was described as being much simpler to use. The one advantage that the American lock did have over the protector lock was its actual potential for greater security, if certain internal parts of the lock and key were rearranged in a particular way. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12733483 | 441,222 |
Loebner Prize $100,000 is the reward for the first program that judges cannot distinguish from a real human in a Turing test that includes deciphering and understanding text, visual, and auditory input. Once this is achieved, the annual competition will end. The rules have varied over the years and early competitions featured restricted conversation Turing tests but since 1995 the discussion has been unrestricted. For the three entries in 2007, Robert Medeksza, Noah Duncan and Rollo Carpenter, some basic "screening questions" were used by the sponsor to evaluate the state of the technology. These included simple questions about the time, what round of the contest it is, etc.; general knowledge ("What is a hammer for?"); comparisons ("Which is faster, a train or a plane?"); and questions demonstrating memory for preceding parts of the same conversation. "All nouns, adjectives and verbs will come from a dictionary suitable for children or adolescents under the age of 12." Entries did not need to respond "intelligently" to the questions to be accepted. For the first time in 2008 the sponsor allowed introduction of a preliminary phase to the contest opening up the competition to previously disallowed web-based entries judged by a variety of invited interrogators. The available rules do not state how interrogators are selected or instructed | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=238725 | 247,309 |
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