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76,704,042 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%206742 | NGC 6742 (also known as Abell 50) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Draco. NGC 6742 was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel in 1788. Very few studies have been carried out on NGC 6742 and the identification of the central star of the nebula by the Kepler Space Telescope is uncertain.
Morphology
Two distances are indicated in the SIMBAD astronomical database: 5,150 ± 1,030 kpc (~16,800 ly) and approximately 5,091 pc (~16,600 ly). Its apparent size is 0.553. No data is available for its speed.
Observation
NGC 6742 has a magnitude of 13.4, meaning that its surface brightness is high enough to be seen with a 25 cm diameter telescope. It appears as a round disk measuring 30"6.
Gallery
See also
Lists of nebulae
List of planetary nebulae
List of NGC objects (6001–7000)
References
External links
NGC 6742 at SIMBAD
Planetary nebulae
Draco (constellation)
6742
Astronomical objects discovered in 1788
Discoveries by William Herschel | NGC 6742 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 224 | [
"Constellations",
"Draco (constellation)"
] |
76,704,792 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%206563 | NGC 6563 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Sagittarius. NGC 6563 was discovered by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop in 1826. Renowned observer and author Stephen James O'Meara described it as a "hidden treasure".
Morphology
Two fully compatible distances are indicated in the SIMBAD database: 1.665 ± 0.333 kpc (~5430 ly)6 and approximately 1646 pc (~5370 ly). Two identical speed values are also indicated on SIMBAD, −31.0 ± 5.0 km/s. The apparent size of the nebula is 0.8'3 or 0.79'4 (0.795 ± 0.005'), which, taking into account the distance calculations, equates to an actual size of 1, 26 ± 0.26 al. Observations show the expanding CO shell is pretty much continuously distributed around the minor axis waist and the nebula is tilted to the plane of the sky. The shell is also fragmented into a series of condensations.
Central star
The visual magnitude of the central star is 17.49 and its mass is estimated at 2.932 solar masses. Its surface temperature reaches 123 k K and its luminosity is equal to 69 times that of the Sun. The radius of the nebula is estimated at 0.122 pc and its age is equal to 6,350 years.
Gallery
See also
List of planetary nebulae
List of NGC objects (6001–7000)
External links
NGC 6563 at SIMBAD
NGC 6563 at LEDA
NGC 6563 at NASA/IPAC
References
Planetary nebulae
Sagittarius (constellation)
Discoveries by James Dunlop
Astronomical objects discovered in 1826
6563 | NGC 6563 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 353 | [
"Sagittarius (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
76,707,219 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department%20of%20Defense%20Directive%203000.09 | Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 is the current US policy on autonomous weapons.
It states: "Autonomous … weapons systems shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force." However, the policy requires that autonomous weapon systems that kill people or use kinetic force, selecting and engaging targets without further human intervention, be certified as compliant with "appropriate levels" and other standards, not that such weapon systems cannot meet these standards and are therefore forbidden. "Semi-autonomous" hunter-killers that autonomously identify and attack targets do not require certification.
References
Policies of Barack Obama
Directive
Regulation of artificial intelligence
Regulation of unmanned aerial vehicles | Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 | [
"Technology"
] | 136 | [
"Computing and society",
"Regulation of artificial intelligence"
] |
76,711,388 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%202484 | NGC 2484 is a large lenticular galaxy located in the Lynx constellation. It is situated 560 million light-years away from the Milky Way, which given by its apparent dimensions, means NGC 2484 is around 304,000 light-years across. It is classified a Fanaroff and Riley radio galaxy.
Observation history
NGC 2484 was discovered on 21 January in 1885, by French astronomer Edouard Stephan, who first described the object as "very faint, very small round with a bright middle and mottled, but not resolved."
Characteristics
NGC 2484 has an active galactic nucleus. It also hosts a radio source in its center called 3C 189. According to a study, in which exploring the magnetic environment was done, researchers learnt that the rotation measure was complex, which they gave as evidence for anisotropic fluctuations in two regions. An unusual stripe was shown along its jet axis, which has a low uniform rotation measure (RM) in the approaching lobe and arc-like RM structures, showing sign reversals in receding lobes. They found that the amplitude across its source is inconsistent and believed it is most likely caused by compressed gas around the lobe's leading edges.
Another study shows the x-ray emitting atmospheres of NGC 2484 which indicates it as a low-power radio galaxy. There were multiple x-ray components present and each gas component has a wide range of liner sizes that follow cluster X-ray luminosity and temperature correlations, hinting no relationship of its presence and its gas friction, although the intergalactic medium is enough to confine the outer radio structures.
NGC 2484 is one of the 8 galaxies to be included as part of the 4th Fermi Point Source Catalogue, among them: MRK 421, MRK 501, NGC 315, 3C 264, 3C 274 and FR 0 galaxy, 4C 39.12. Most of them have low redshifts. It also produces extragalactic jets and is the source of gamma-rays.
References
Radio galaxies
Lenticular galaxies
Lynx (constellation)
Astronomical objects discovered in 1885
2484
04125
189
+37.21
22350
22350
J07582810+3747121
+06-18-004 | NGC 2484 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 455 | [
"Lynx (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
63,601,386 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrosomial%20iron | Sucrosomial iron is a new oral iron preparation containing ferric pyrophosphate covered by phospholipids plus sucrose ester of fatty acid matrix. This allows the molecule to be absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract by trans-cellular, para-cellular and M-cells independently of hepcidin and due to gastro-resistant properties, it does not cause the side effects such as gastric irritation which is commonly associated to oral iron.
References
Drugs | Sucrosomial iron | [
"Chemistry"
] | 105 | [
"Pharmacology",
"Chemicals in medicine",
"Drugs",
"Products of chemical industry"
] |
63,601,513 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri%20de%20Miffonis | Henri de Miffonis (born Louis Fernand Henri de Miffonis; May 24, 1882 – 1955) was a French-Canadian civil engineer. He specialized in the construction of lighthouses, and studied civil engineering at the University of Paris. In 1905, after obtaining his diploma, he accepted an offer of employment with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada for work with the Commission des phares (Commission of Lighthouses), newly created. Miffonis' work was supervised by the Chief Engineer of the commission, William Patrick Anderson, a fervent promoter of reinforced concrete in the construction of lighthouses.
The recruitment of Miffonis, for his competence in the use of concrete, corresponded with an intense period of maritime infrastructure construction in Canada, and in particular, the construction of lighthouses. During the first three years of the commission, Miffonis developed and patented in 1908 plans for the design of tapered reinforced concrete lighthouses with flying buttresses.
The importance of Miffonis' role in the construction of Canadian lighthouses between 1908 and 1913 was underestimated until the rediscovery of his correspondence with Anderson. In 1913, Miffonis published a work presenting calculations showing the use of reinforced concrete and its advantages in the construction of lighthouses.
At the end of World War I, there was little construction of new lighthouses and Miffonis ended his career with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Biography
Education and arrival in Canada
Miffonis was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, on 24 May 1882. He received his education at the University of Paris during a time when reinforced concrete was revolutionizing the building industry in France and was considered the leading edge in its use as a new material. Miffonis was profoundly influenced by this assessment and the use of reinforced concrete was a key element of his career.
In 1905, Miffonis joined the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans as an engineer for the Commission des phares (Commission of Lighthouses). This commission was created in February 1904 to respond to pressure from shipowners asking the Canadian authorities to aid in navigation along the Canadian coasts. The Chief Engineer of the commission, William Patrick Anderson, was persuaded that reinforced concrete was the best choice for construction of future lighthouses in terms of solidity and costs.
The construction of the new lighthouses using reinforced concrete begins after the recruitment of Miffonis. The Assistant Chief Engineer, B. H. Fraser, mentioned that Miffonis was an educated man, possessing a grand culture and a great knowledge of mathematics and mechanics and one of the best theorists of the department. All of these qualities, as well as the needs of the Commission des phares, result in Miffonis being assigned to the head office of the commission in Ottawa rather than one of the regional offices. The hiring of the French engineer reassured the Department of Fisheries and Oceans about the use of reinforced concrete as a material for the construction of the new lighthouses erected at the beginning of the 20th century.
Career at the Commission de phares
The arrival of Miffonis corresponded to a prosperous period of construction of reinforced concrete lighthouses in Canada.
The initial forecast of the Commission de phares noted that fourteen towers had been constructed of reinforced concrete, but in the end, more than twenty-five lighthouses were constructed with the material between 1906 and 1914. The first five reinforced concrete lighthouses were built by the Steel Concrete Company of Montréal between 1906 and 1908, the company chosen because they possessed a great deal of expertise using concrete. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was dependent on this firm to complete the towers in a reasonable timeframe.
The five reinforced concrete lighthouses constructed by the Steel Concrete Co. used plans from the Chief Engineer of the company, Emil Andrew Wallberg. Wallberg's plans called for round towers without buttresses. Their construction, along with Wallberg's plans, were a source of conflict with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans because the department preferred the lighthouses to be built using their own plans. The conflict escalated when Wallberg asked for a patent in May 1907 for the reinforced concrete round tower design, a request which the department contested in August on the basis of the refusal of Wallberg to use the plans furnished by the department. All the same, Wallberg obtained his patent in 1908. The department, however, obtained success in regard to the choice of the plans, as lighthouses being built from the end of 1908 were required to be constructed according to the department's directives using a mainly tapered form.
Meanwhile, Miffonis applied for a patent for his plans of reinforced concrete lighthouses with flying buttresses in June 1907, about a month after the patent application of Wallberg. Miffonis' request described the physical characteristics of his model of a concrete tower and the differences between his plan and the models of concrete towers already patented; i.e., the presence of the flying buttresses placed at the ends of the prismatic tower and the presence of floors at the junction of the buttresses and the walls of the tower. There was also a description of the advantages of his model, i.e., a great solidity of the tower and a great resistance to lateral wind forces due to the flying buttresses as well as a reduction of the quantity of concrete needed for construction.
Miffonis' patent application was contested by Wallberg who accused the patent of using Wallberg's plans. However, Wallberg's claims were rejected by Miffonis and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans because Wallberg's plans never included flying buttresses. Miffonis obtained his Canadian patent on June 2, 1908. He also obtained a patent in the United States in 1910 for the same kind of reinforce concrete lighthouse with flying buttresses.
During the same period, a correspondence between Miffonis and William Patrick Anderson, Chief Engineer of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, dated February 21, 1908, indicated that the French engineer was ready to renounce his rights in favor of the department to use his plans. This practice, then widespread, was used by government agencies to prevent companies from charging fees during construction. Two other correspondences, dated February 25, 1908 and March 20, 1908, between Miffonis and Anderson also demonstrate that the latter was irritated by the patent request of his subordinate, whom Anderson reminds that the plans of the towers would not have been possible without the advice Anderson had given Miffonis for the addition of floors and buttresses. But, it is also recognized in the two letters that the father of the concept was the French engineer.
Between 1909 and 1911, Miffonis produced plans and supervised the construction of three of the tallest lighthouses with flying buttresses, i.e., in Pointe-au-Père, in île Caribou, and in Estevan Point. A total of nine lighthouses of this type were built under the auspices of Anderson. The expertise of Miffonis in the use of reinforced concrete was not limited to lighthouses. He also participated in the construction of a quay with this material at Pointe-du-Lac in 1909–1910, which is mentioned in an annual report of Anderson's in 1911.
In 1913, Miffonis published a work of three hundred pages with the title Béton et béton armé, aide-mémoire pratique à l'usage des ingénieurs, architectes, entrepreneurs et surveillants de travaux (Concrete and reinforced concrete, a practical checklist for engineers, architects, contractors, and supervisors). This treatice reports on Miffonis' work on the use of reinforced concrete as a building material and describes the characteristics of the concrete components as well as the properties of mortar. The book also addresses the subject of patented systems for the use of concrete and presents calculations and diagrams relating to its use. In a section specifically addressing lighthouses, Miffonis mentions the advantages using of concrete, a material resistant to vibration and easy to form to a desired shape. Miffonis' work made the use of concrete in France less empirical thanks to the introduction of more rigorous calculation standards.
Following Anderson's retirement in 1919, the economic downturn linked to the end of the First World War and the fact that the Canadian network of aids to navigation is now more complete, the functions of Miffonis were modified and few new lighthouses were built. Also in 1919, Miffonis applied for and obtained Canadian citizenship. Between 1921 and 1922, Miffonis, who then worked in the physics laboratories of Queen's University, carried out research on the optical qualities of various sources of lighting as well as on the reflective properties of certain materials likely to be used in lighthouses.
During this period, he published some scientific articles on his research in optics. In 1923, he published an article in the journal of the Franklin Institute titled The sense of verticality and its application to lighthouse work that dealt with construction of tall structures, their resistance to wind, as well as the level of visibility of such buildings for those who look for them, especially according to distance. The next year, he published an article in The Astrophysical Journal about the construction of a device called a periodoscope, which is used to measure the period of a repetition of an event in astronomy when there is a limited number of observations.
In 1925, he was assigned to the Dominion Lighthouse Depot, an organization responsible for the maintenance of lighthouses and marine infrastructure in Canada. Miffonis' work there was much more routine, and he no longer had to design plans for new lighthouse towers. Mifonis died in Canada in 1955.
Legacy
Authorship of reinforced concrete lighthouse plans
According to historian Brigitte Violette, the authorship of reinforced concrete lighthouse plans constructed in Canada between 1908 and 1914 has been subject to different interpretations. Violette also mentions that the authors of the history of lighthouses of Canada have often attributed the concept of lighthouses with flying buttresses to Anderson. The confusion regarding the authorship of these plans may be attributed to the publication in 1913 of a work by Frederick A. Talbot, Lightships and Lighthouses, which was written with information provided by William Patrick Anderson and to whom was attributed the building of the reinforced concrete lighthouses. However, the patent application filed by Miffonis in 1907 for this type of tower was granted in 1908, and questions the authorship of Anderson concerning the reinforced concrete tower plans. Furthermore, the description provided by Talbot in 1913 of the advantages of this method of construction regarding resistance to lateral wind forces and the solidity of the tower makes up the explanatory text that Miffonis wrote in his patent application in 1907.
Historians that have written about Canadian lighthouses have limited the importance of Miffonis' role in the conception of lighthouses of the early 20th century to that of a "simple designer" by attributing their authorship to " inventive genius "of Anderson. However, historian Brigitte Violette indicates in her work published in 2009 for the 100th anniversiry of the lighthouse of Pointe-au-Père, that the correspondence exchanged between Anderson and Miffonis beginning in 1908, and in particular the two letters written by Anderson in February and March of 1908, leaves little doubt that the authorship of the plans is that of the French engineer. Despite the irritation manifested by Anderson in these letters towards Miffonis, he nevertheless recognizes that the authorship of the concept is due to the latter. According to the historian Donald Graham, the irritation of Anderson may be related to "Anderson's bossy character and the iron fist with which he leads his team", as well as his desire to leave "a monument enabling himself to achieve international renown".
A better knowledge of the context and the documentation of the time makes it possible to say that the participation of Anderson in the plans of the reinforced concrete lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century is rather related to the comments and proposals of modification he made to Miffonis and Wallberg's plans. Miffonis' theoretical knowledge of the use of reinforced concrete leaves little doubt as to the importance of his participation in the erection of lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century in Canada and to the fact that he is much more than a simple designer working for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Lighthouses constructed according to the plans of Miffonis
Along with the lighthouses of Pointe-au-Père, île Caribou, and Estevan Point, nine of the lighthouses constructed between 1906 and 1914 were constructed with the patented design of Miffonis, i.e., a prismatic form and a tower that is hexagonal or octagonal featuring flying buttresses. This architecture seems to have been reserved for the tallest constructions, all carried out between 1906 and 1912. It was not used thereafter although Anderson considered the concrete achievements to be "the ultimate completion in the art of building lighthouses".
Other types of lighthouses were constructed by the Commission des phares according to the plans of Miffonis. The ten towers of less than 18.5 meters, built between 1908 and 1914, are of a "more sober" form, without buttress, providing a prismatic form over the entire length of the barrel: the lighthouses of Flint Island in Nova Sotia (1908–1910), of the île Parisienne in Ontario (1912), of Point Atkinson, Sheringham and Langara Point in British Columbia (1912–1913), of New Ferolle in Newfoundland (1913), and of Natashquan and île Sainte-Marie in Québec (1913–1914).
In his 1913 book, Miffonis states that these lighthouses, although less spectacular than those with flying buttresses, are much easier to build. The "less spectacular" aspect of these lighthouse towers explains the "little controversy as to their design" as noted by historian Brigitte Violette.
In addition, Miffonis drew more conventional lighthouse plans, in particular that of Cap-Chat built in 1909. The quadrangular structure is framed by four concrete pillars connected by wooden walls bent at the top by steel beams. The plaster which was originally intended to cover the walls was instead covered with a facing of clapboard.
Publications
Béton et béton armé, aide-mémoire pratique à l'usage des ingénieurs, architectes, entrepreneurs et surveillants de travaux published in Paris by H. Ferreyrol, 1913
See also
List of lighthouses in Canada
History of lighthouses in Canada
References
Bibliography
French civil engineers
Canadian civil engineers
Marine engineers
Lists of buildings and structures in Canada
1882 births
People from Boulogne-Billancourt
University of Paris alumni
1955 deaths
French emigrants to Canada | Henri de Miffonis | [
"Engineering"
] | 2,984 | [
"Marine engineers",
"Marine engineering"
] |
63,601,653 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%20Valent | Peter Valent (born 9 October 1962 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian hematologist and stem cell researcher. Since 1990 he leads a research group at the Medical University of Vienna. From 2002 he coordinates the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis and since 2008 he is Scientific Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Hematology and Oncology of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society in Austria.
Life and education
Valent studied medicine at the Medical University of Vienna and graduated in 1987. He is a specialist in internal medicine and hematology and was promoted to Assistant Professor for Experimental Hematology in 1992 and Associate Professor for Internal Medicine in 1995. Valent visited several universities in Germany as Guest Scientist, including the Institute of Pathology of the University of Tübingen, the University of Schleswig-Holstein (Campus Lübeck) and the LMU Munich.
Scientific contributions
Mast cell research and the classification of mastocytosis
Between 1989 and 1999 Valent examined the phenotype and growth characteristics of human mast cells. He found that mast cells form a unique lineage in the hematopoietic cell system. In subsequent studies, neoplastic mast cells were characterized. The resulting data contributed essentially to the development of diagnostic criteria and the WHO classification of mastocytosis. In 2000, Valent organized a Working Conference on Mastocytosis to implement this classification together with an international consensus group. Since 2002 Valent coordinates the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis that expanded rapidly and provides a useful basis for the development and conduct of studies and activities in the field of mastocytosis. In the forthcoming years, the diagnostic WHO criteria of mastocytosis were validated, adjusted and extended. To discuss these developments, Valent and his team organized additional conferences in Vienna, including a Working Conference on Standards and Standardization of Diagnostic Criteria and Therapies in Mastocytosis and one on the Global Classification of Mast Cell Disorders and Mast Cell Activation Syndromes (2010).
Additional scientific contributions
One additional focus in Valent´s research is the neoplastic stem cell, also termed cancer stem cell in the context of cancer and leukemic stem cell in leukemia contexts. Valent investigates the phenotype of these cells in various hematologic neoplasms and develops concepts predicting the step-wise development of these cells from normal stem cells. The major aim in his research is to identify molecular targets in these cells and to develop more effective (curative) therapies by eliminating these cells in various blood cell disorders, including Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, Systemic Mastocytosis and Myelodysplastic Syndromes. These studies are primarily conducted in the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Hematology and Oncology at the Medical University of Vienna.
Valent is a member of numerous scientific organizations and has published over 850 publications since 1988, including more than 500 original papers, over 200 review articles and numerous book contributions. He also published numerous textbook chapters. In 2001, 2008 and 2016 he drew book chapters on mastocytosis as the author of the WHO. Peter Valent is one of the most frequently cited scientists from German-speaking countries in the field of immunology from 2011 to 2015. In Austria he is one of the top 5 scientists in the field of medicine (as of June 2022 - https://research.com /scientists-rankings/medicine/at). In total, his work has been cited more than 35,000 times by March 2019 and his h-index is 103 (as of April 2022). Peter Valent is currently ranked #777 among the world's top scientists in Biology and Biochemistry as of April 2022, and #913 among the world's top scientists in Medicine as of June 2022 - https://research.com/scientists- rankings/medicine).
Awards
Valent received several national and international awards, including the Karl Landsteiner-Award of the Austrian Society for Allergy and Immunology, the Paracelsus Award of the Austrian Society for Internal Medicine, the Wilhelm Türk Award of the Austrian Society for Hematology and Oncology, the Theodor-Billroth Medal of the Austrian Medical Association, the Mac Forster Award of the European Society for Clinical Investigation and the Middle European Award for Interdisciplinary Cancer Research.
References
External links
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Hematology and Oncology
Living people
1962 births
Scientists from Vienna
21st-century Austrian physicians
20th-century Austrian physicians
Austrian medical researchers
Stem cell researchers
Hematologists
Medical textbook writers | Peter Valent | [
"Biology"
] | 925 | [
"Stem cell researchers",
"Stem cell research"
] |
63,601,960 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information%20fluctuation%20complexity | Information fluctuation complexity is an information-theoretic quantity defined as the fluctuation of information about entropy. It is derivable from fluctuations in the predominance of order and chaos in a dynamic system and has been used as a measure of complexity in many diverse fields. It was introduced in a 1993 paper by Bates and
Definition
The information fluctuation complexity of a discrete dynamic system is a function of the probability distribution of its states when it is subject to random external input data. The purpose of driving the system with a rich information source such as a random number generator or a white noise signal is to probe the internal dynamics of the system in much the same way as a frequency-rich impulse is used in signal processing.
If a system has possible states and the state probabilities are known, then its information entropy is
where is the information content of state .
The information fluctuation complexity of the system is defined as the standard deviation or fluctuation of about its mean :
or
The fluctuation of state information is zero in a maximally disordered system with all ; the system simply mimics its random inputs. is also zero if the system is perfectly ordered with only one fixed state , regardless of the inputs. is non-zero between these two extremes with a mixture of higher-probability states and lower-probability states populating state space.
Fluctuation of information allows for memory and computation
As a complex dynamic system evolves over time, how it transitions between states depends on external stimuli in an irregular way. At times it may be more sensitive to external stimuli (unstable) and at other times less sensitive (stable). When a given state has multiple possible next-states, external information determines which one will be next and the system gains this information by following a particular trajectory in state space. However, if several different states all lead to the same next-state, then upon entering the next-state the system loses information about which state preceded it. Thus, a complex system exhibits alternating information gain and loss as it evolves over time. This alternation or fluctuation of information is equivalent to remembering and forgetting — temporary information storage or memory — an essential feature of non-trivial computation.
The gain or loss of information associated with transitions between states can be related to state information. The net information gain of a transition from state to state is the information gained when leaving state less the information lost when entering state :
Here is the forward conditional probability that if the present state is then the next state will be and is the reverse conditional probability that if the present state is then the previous state was . The conditional probabilities are related to the transition probability , the probability that a transition from state to state occurs, by:
Eliminating the conditional probabilities:
Therefore, the net information gained by the system as a result of the transition depends only on the increase in state information from the initial to the final state. It can be shown that this is true even for multiple consecutive
is reminiscent of the relation between force and potential energy. is like potential and is like force in . External information "pushes" a system "uphill" to a state of higher information potential to accomplish information storage, much like pushing a mass uphill to a state of higher gravitational potential stores energy. The amount of energy stored depends only on the final height, not on the path up the hill. Similarly, the amount of information stored does not depend on the transition path between an initial common state and a final rare state. Once a system reaches a rare state with high information potential, it may then "fall" back to a common state, losing previously stored information.
It may be useful to compute the standard deviation of about its mean (which is zero), namely the fluctuation of net information gain but takes into account multi-transition memory loops in state space and therefore should be more indicative of the computational power of a system. Moreover, is easier to apply because there can be many more transitions than states.
Chaos and order
A dynamic system that is sensitive to external information (unstable) exhibits chaotic behavior whereas one that is insensitive to external information (stable) exhibits orderly behavior. A complex system exhibits both behaviors, fluctuating between them in dynamic balance when subject to a rich information source. The degree of fluctuation is quantified by ; it captures the alternation in the predominance of chaos and order in a complex system as it evolves over time.
Example: rule 110 variant of the elementary cellular automaton
Source:
The rule 110 variant of the elementary cellular automaton has been proven to be capable of universal computation. The proof is based on the existence and interactions of cohesive and self-perpetuating cell patterns known as gliders, which are examples of emergent phenomena associated with complex systems and which imply the capability of groups of automaton cells to remember that a glider is passing through them. It is therefore to be expected that there will be memory loops in state space resulting from alternations of information gain and loss, instability and stability, chaos and order.
Consider a 3-cell group of adjacent automaton cells that obey rule 110: . The next state of the center cell depends on the present state of itself and the end cells as specified by the rule:
To compute the information fluctuation complexity of this system, attach a driver cell to each end of the 3-cell group to provide random external stimuli like so, , such that the rule can be applied to the two end cells. Next, determine what the next state will be for each possible present state and for each possible combination of driver cell contents, in order to determine the forward conditional probabilities.
The state diagram of this system is depicted below, with circles representing states and arrows representing transitions between states. The eight possible states of this system, to , are labeled with the octal equivalent of the 3-bit contents of the 3-cell group: 7 to 0. The transition arrows are labeled with forward conditional probabilities. Notice that there is variability in the divergence and convergence of arrows corresponding to variability in gain and loss of information originating from the driver cells.
The forward conditional probabilities are determined by the proportion of possible driver cell contents that drive a particular transition. For example, for the four possible combinations of two driver cell contents, state 7 leads to states 5, 4, 1 and 0 and therefore , , , and are each or 25%. Similarly, state 0 leads to states 0, 1, 0 and 1 and therefore and are each or 50%. And so forth.
The state probabilities are related by
and
These linear algebraic equations can be solved for the state probabilities, with the following
The information entropy and the complexity can then be computed from the state probabilities:
Note that the maximum possible entropy for eight states is , which is the case when all . Thus, rule 110 has a relatively high entropy or state utilization of . However, this does not preclude a considerable fluctuation of state information about entropy and thus a considerable value of the complexity. Whereas, maximum entropy would preclude complexity.
An alternative method can be used to obtain the state probabilities when the analytical method used above is unfeasible. Simply drive the system at its inputs (the driver cells) with a random source for many generations and observe the state probabilities empirically. When this is done via computer simulation for 10 million generations the results are as
Since both and increase with system size, their dimensionless ratio , the relative information fluctuation complexity, is included to compare systems of different sizes. Notice that the empirical and analytical results agree for the 3-cell automaton and that the relative complexity levels off to about by 10 cells.
In the paper by Bates and is computed for all elementary cellular automaton rules and it was observed that the ones that exhibit slow-moving gliders and possibly stationary objects, as rule 110 does, are highly correlated with large values of . can therefore be used as a filter to select candidate rules for universal computation, which is challenging to prove.
Applications
Although the derivation of the information fluctuation complexity formula is based on information fluctuations in dynamic systems, the formula depends only on state probabilities and therefore is also applicable to any probability distribution, including those derived from static images or text.
Over the years the original paper has been referred to by researchers in many diverse fields: complexity theory, complex systems science, complex networks, chaotic dynamics, many-body localization entanglement, environmental engineering, ecological complexity, ecological time-series analysis, ecosystem sustainability, air and water pollution, hydrological wavelet analysis, soil water flow, soil moisture, headwater runoff, groundwater depth, air traffic control, flow patterns and flood events, topology, economics, market forecasting of metal and electricity prices, health informatics, human cognition, human gait kinematics, neurology, EEG analysis, education, investing, artificial life and aesthetics.
References
Information theory
Entropy and information
Statistical randomness
Complex systems theory
Measures of complexity
Chaos theory
Automata (computation)
Cellular automata | Information fluctuation complexity | [
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"Dynamical systems"
] |
63,602,131 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar%20angels | Radar angels are an effect seen on radar displays when there is a periodic structure in the view of the radar that is roughly the same length as the signal's wavelength. The angel appears to be a physically huge object on the display, often miles across, that can obscure real targets. These were first noticed in the 1940s and were a topic of considerable study in the 1950s. The underlying mechanism is due to Bragg's law.
History and source
Early radars were subject to strong returns from the ground and their plan position indicator displays often featured many permanent echos that blanked out portions of the screen. Angels appeared on these systems, but were difficult to distinguish from these ground returns and generally not noticed. Development of the COHO concept in the UK eliminated these permanent echos, at which point angels were clearly seen for the first time on a continual basis. One of the earliest examples was seen in 1953 on the Radar, Anti-Aircraft No. 4 Mk. 7, one of the first COHO systems. Some of these were identified as flocks of birds, which led one ornithologist to purchase a surplus Radar, Anti-Aircraft No. 3 Mk. 7 to perform bird tracking.
When they were first seen, there was widespread agreement that many such angels were being caused by meteorological effects, but no one was able to explain their behavior based on this theory. It was known that birds could cause radar returns, as this had been noticed very early on Chain Home systems even before World War II. Experiments were performed by the Radar Research and Development Establishment that demonstrated the radar cross section of a dead bird was about 0.01 square meters, about the same as a bag with water. This is much smaller than the normal detection limit of the radars, and there were certain aspects of the motion that seemed to be at odds with the conclusion these were caused by birds.
In one such example, the experimental COHO MEW radar at Great Baddow noted repeated ring-shaped angels that appeared to be slowly radiating outward from a point and drifting in the wind, but only in the morning. They were convinced this was due to a local factory starting up its steam plant and the resulting hot air was causing the display due to thermals. When they went to the location they found open parkland with a stand of trees.
The mystery was solved when they checked in the morning and found huge flocks of starlings leaving the trees in a curious wave-like pattern. At night, the birds were clustered in trees in the center of the grove and at dawn began tree-hopping towards the outermost trees. Then, based on some invisible signal, all the birds at the outside of the grove would leave at once and begin flying off, radiating outward. As soon as one group left, more birds would, over a period of minutes, individually tree-hop outward to fill up the outer trees and repeat the process. At night, the birds arrived in small groups and did not cause any display to appear.
It was not until the later 1950s that it was widely accepted that birds were the primary cause of angels. This conclusion was eventually put forth in 1957 by no less than the Royal Society:
With pulse radars, a solution was soon found, known as swept gain in UK parlance and sensitivity time control (STC) in the US. According to the radar equation, the energy of a return signal varies with the fourth power, so nearby objects have much stronger returns and can swamp more distant objects. The idea of STC is to lower the sensitivity of the receiver for nearby targets before reaching maximum gain at longer range, perhaps . By adjusting the magnitude of the gain suppression, the returns from birds can be eliminated while still allowing aircraft to be seen.
Impacts
Although angels were a problem for all radars of the era, they rendered the Canadian Mid-Canada Line almost unusable in the spring and fall when millions of large birds migrated by the stations. This was made worse by the birds landing near the warm Diesel generators at the stations. Typical radars send out short pulses of signal, and the STC can be triggered by that pulse. The Mid-Canada Line was a continuous wave radar (CW) that had no inherent timing to its signals, and no corresponding way to mute the signal for nearby objects. The effect was so overpowering that a significant feature of the similar AN/FPS-23 radars used on the DEW Line, then under construction, was the addition of Doppler filtering to remove objects travelling slower than from the display.
Although birds are the most widespread cause of these effects, any periodic structure in view of the radar can cause similar effects. This is particularly notable in sea-scanning radars in aircraft and satellites when the pattern of waves matches some multiple of the wavelength of the radar. This effect has been exploited in radars that measure the sea state offshore, or wind-measuring radars that create the required patterns using acoustic waves generated by large loudspeakers.
References
Citations
Bibliography
Radar theory
Radio frequency propagation | Radar angels | [
"Physics"
] | 1,017 | [
"Physical phenomena",
"Spectrum (physical sciences)",
"Radio frequency propagation",
"Electromagnetic spectrum",
"Waves"
] |
63,602,368 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison%20R.%20Fout | Alison R. Fout is an American inorganic chemist at the Texas A&M University where she holds the rank of professor. She has contributed to the discovery of new catalysts with NHC ligands. She discovered a family of catalysts that reduce oxyanions such as nitrate, perchlorate to nitric oxide and chloride, respectively.
Recognition
As an independent investigator, she received the following recognition:
2017 Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award
2016–2021 U. S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program
2015 Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences, AAAS
2015 Sloan Research Fellowship
2014 National Science Foundation CAREER Awards
She also was recognized from scientific journals. In 2016, she received recognition as New Talent Americas from Dalton Transactions. That same year, the American Chemical Society awarded her as an Emerging Investigator in Bioinorganic Chemistry. In 2019 she received the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award. In 2017 she presented the Dalton Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley. At the 2018 Metals in Biology Gordon Conference, she received the Ed Stiefel Young Investigator Award.
References
1984 births
Living people
21st-century American chemists
21st-century American women scientists
American women chemists
American inorganic chemists
Indiana University Bloomington alumni
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty | Alison R. Fout | [
"Chemistry"
] | 259 | [
"American inorganic chemists",
"Inorganic chemists"
] |
63,602,390 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum%20%28Unix%29 | Capsicum is an implementation of capability-based security for UNIX and similar systems. Presented at USENIX 2010, the system is part of FreeBSD since its 9.0 release. It has also been adapted to DragonflyBSD in the form of kernel patches. Further technical details can be found in the Ph.D. thesis by Robert Watson.
The system works by chunking the normal permissions up into very small pieces. When a process enters capsicum mode, it loses all permissions normally associated with its controlling user, except "capabilities" it already has in the form of file descriptors. A process can also receive capabilities via Unix sockets. These file descriptors not only control access to the file system, but also to other devices like the network sockets. Flags are also used to control more fine-grained access like reads and writes.
CloudABI
CloudABI is an application binary interface based on capsicum. It keeps the overall capsicum permission model, but uses it to redesign a simplified environment for processes (system calls, C library, etc.) to run on, so that programs become portable to any platform supporting the ABI on the same instruction set architecture. The interface it offers is roughly POSIX minus parts that do not work with capability-based security. , CloudABI is natively a part of FreeBSD, and it can be run on other systems either via a Capsicum-based patch or using a non-secure system call emulator.
As of October 2020, CloudABI has been deprecated in favor of WebAssembly System Interface for lack of interest.
References
External links
Computer security models
Access control
Capability systems | Capsicum (Unix) | [
"Technology",
"Engineering"
] | 340 | [
"Cybersecurity engineering",
"Capability systems",
"Computer systems",
"Computer security models"
] |
63,603,451 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoiamides | The hoiamides are a class of small molecules recently characterized from isolations of secondary metabolites of cyanobacteria that feature a triheterocyclic system. Hoiamide A and B are cyclic while hoiamide C and D are linear. Hoiamide A and B demonstrate neurotoxicity by acting on mammalian voltage gated sodium channels, while hoiamide D shows inhibition of the p53/MDM2 complex. The hoiamides are promising therapeutic targets, making their total synthesis an attractive feat.
Structural class
The structural class of hoiamides is charactered by an acetate extended and S-adenosyl methionine modified isoleucine unit. Central to the molecule is a triheterocyclic system made of two α-methylated thiazolines and one thiazole, and a highly oxygenated and methylated C-15 polyketide unit. The hoiamides are stereochemically complex structures, with hoiamide A and B exhibiting 15 chiral centers.
History
Marine cyanobacteria obtained by SCUBA in Papua New Guinea offer abundant secondary metabolites. Sometimes called blue-green algae, marine cyanobacteria have long been recognized for their toxic effects. Since the 1930s, collections have been gathered from these organisms.
Hoiamide A was isolated in 2009 from Lyngbya majuscula and Phormidium gracile through screening of cyanobacteria extracts using high throughput calcium and sodium ion influx assay in neocortical mouse neurons. Other groups have also found hoiamide A in M. producens and Phormidium gracile. Hoiamide B and C were isolated in 2010 from Symploca sp. and Oscillatoria cf. Hoiamide D was isolated in 2012 from Symploca sp. The total synthesis of hoiamide C was completed in 2011.
Bioactivity
Hoiamide A
In mouse neocortical neurons, hoiamide A acts as a partial agonist to site two of the mammalian voltage gated sodium channel (VGSC). In electrically excitable cells VGSC allow the influx of sodium that causes the rising phase of the action potential. Hoiamide A stimulated sodium influx with EC50 of 1.7 micromolar in mouse neocortical neurons
VGSC have at least six neurotoxic sites that act as targets for small molecules. By using a radioligand probe [3H]BTX known to bind to neurotoxic site two on the VGSC alpha subunit, a group found that hoiamide A must bind to site two as well, given its inhibition of [3H]BTX. A full agonist of VGSC site two, batrachotoxin, was then used to determine to what extent hoiamide A acted as an agonist. The experiments demonstrated that hoiamide A is a partial agonist because the maximum sodium influx hoiamide A binding caused was less than that of batrachotoxin.
Another study found that hoiamide A stimulated capspase-3 activity, lactic acid dehydrogenase efflux, and nuclear condensation. These processes are specifically and uniquely involved in necrosis and apoptosis, suggesting that hoiamide A is involved neuronal death by both necrosis and apoptosis.
Hoiamide B
Like hoiamide A, hoiamide B stimulated sodium influx in mouse neocortical neurons with an EC50 value of 3.9 micromolar. Because hoiamide B is so structurally similar to hoiamide A, research currently predicts that B is also a site 2 VGSC inhibitor.
Though the mechanism of inhibition of calcium oscillations in mouse neocortical neurons is unknown for hoiamide A and B, both compounds potently suppress spontaneous calcium oscillations with EC50 values of 45.6 and 79.8 nanomolar, respectively.
Hoiamide C
Hoiamide C exhibits a LC50 of 1.3 micromolar in brine shrimp toxicity assays. However, it does not disrupt spontaneous calcium ion oscillations.
Because ethanol is used in storage of biological material, it is possible that hoiamide C may be an extraction artifact of hoiamide D.
Hoiamide D
p53 protein is a well known tumor suppressor that regulates the cell cycle, DNA repair, and apoptosis by acting as a transcription factor. MDM2 is a murine ubiquitin ligase that downregulates p52 by various mechanisms. The binding surface of the two proteins is small, and the interaction is hydrophobic. Through an assay that made available the p53/MDM2 complex, hoiamide D was found to inhibit the activity of the interaction.
Potential therapeutic applications
As partial agonists of VGSC, hoiamide A and B may be able to mimic activity-dependent control of neuronal development through the up-regulation of pathways that influence neuronal growth and plasticity.
Hoiamide D is a molecule that may have applications as a precursor molecule for cancer therapies.
References
Thiazoles
Polyketides | Hoiamides | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,086 | [
"Biomolecules by chemical classification",
"Natural products",
"Polyketides"
] |
63,604,103 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor-homing%20bacteria | Tumor-homing bacteria are facultative or obligate anaerobic bacteria (capable of producing ATP when oxygen is absent or is destroyed in normal oxygen levels) that are able to target cancerous cells in the body, suppress tumor growth and survive in the body for a long time even after the infection. When this type of bacteria is administered into the body, it migrates to the cancerous tissues and starts to grow, and then deploys distinct mechanisms to destroy solid tumors. Each bacteria species uses a different process to eliminate the tumor. Some common tumor homing bacteria include Salmonella, Clostridium, Bifidobacterium, Listeria, and Streptococcus. The earliest research of this type of bacteria was highlighted in 1813 when scientists began observing that patients that had gas gangrene, an infection caused by the bacteria Clostridium, were able to have tumor regressions.
Tumor-inhibition mechanisms
Different strains of tumor homing bacteria in distinct environments use unique or similar processes to inhibit or destroy tumor growth.
Unique mechanisms
Salmonella bacteria kill tumor cells by uncontrolled bacterial multiplication that can lead to the bursting of cancerous cells. Moreover, the macrophages and dendritic cells (type of white blood cells) in these Salmonella-colonized tumors secrete IL-1β, a protein responsible for anti-tumor activity.
S. Typhimurium flagellin increases both innate and adaptive immunity (nonspecific and specific defense mechanisms) of the bacteria by stimulating NK cells (Natural Killer cells) to produce interferon-γ (IFN-γ), an important cytokine (regulatory protein) for this immunity.
Listeria inhibits tumors through NADPH oxidase mediated production (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase) of ROS (reactive oxygen species) which is a cell signaling process that activates CD8+ T cells (cells that kill cancerous tissue) which target primary tumors.
Similar mechanisms
Clostridium, S. Typhimurium, Listeria produce exotoxins (e.g. phospholipases, hemolysins, lipases) that damage the membrane structure and the cellular functions of the tumor using apoptosis or autophagy which is programmed cell death.
Salmonella, Clostridium, and Listeria infections promote tumor elimination by increasing cytokines and chemokines (cell signaling regulatory proteins) that regulate infected sites using granulocytes and cytotoxic lymphocytes (WBC s that kill cancerous cells).
Confirmed medical treatments
Bacterial cancer therapy is an emerging field for cancer treatment. Although many clinical trials are taking place, as of right now only a few confirmed treatments are being administered to patients.
Treatment with live strains of bacteria
The usage of the live attenuated strain of Mycobacterium Bovis, also known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is a confirmed treatment for bladder cancer. BCG therapy is done by intravesical instillation (drug administration into the urinary bladder via a catheter) and has been used since 1970 on cancer patients.
Due to the necrotic and hypoxic regions of tumor cells (area of treatment resistance), drug delivery of chemotherapy can be impaired. Therefore Salmonella can be combined with chemotherapy to provide treatment and transport as Salmonella is not affected by these regions. Moreover, the Salmonella mutant strain VNP20009 increased in number from this combination which causes further inhibition of cancerous cells by stimulating anti-tumor proteins.
Treatment with genetically engineered bacteria
Tumor homing bacteria can be genetically engineered to enhance their anti-tumor activities and be used to transport therapeutic materials based on medical needs. They are usually transformed into a plasmid that contains the specific gene expression of these therapeutic proteins of the bacteria. After the plasmid reaches the target site, the protein's genetic sequence is expressed and the bacteria can have its full biological effect. Currently, there is no approved treatment with genetically engineered bacteria. However, research is being conducted on Listeria and Clostridium as vectors to transport RNAi (suppresses genes) for colon cancer.
Safety
Some active tumor-homing bacteria can be harmful to the human body, since they produce toxins that disturb the cell cycle which results in altered cell growth and chronic infections. However, many ways to enhance the safety of tumor homing bacteria in the body has been found. For example, when the virulent genes of the bacteria are removed by gene targeting, a process where genes are deleted or modified, it can be reduced in pathogenicity (property of causing disease).
Adverse effects
DNA mutations of the tumor homing bacteria in the body can lead to problems like extreme infection and failure of therapy as the genes that are expressed will be different and cause the bacteria to become non-functional.
Incomplete tumor lysis or colonization by the bacteria can lead to delayed treatment and will necessitate the use of other cancer treatments such as chemotherapy or a combination of more. Delayed or combined treatment causes many effects on the body such as vomiting, nausea, loss of appetite, fatigue, and hair loss.
Prevention of adverse effects
Deleting the msbB gene from Salmonella by genetic engineering leads to the loss of lipid A (a lipid responsible for the toxicity levels of gram-negative bacteria) and therefore reduces the toxicity of Salmonella by 10,000-fold.
Generating auxotrophic mutants (a strain of microorganism that will proliferate only when the medium is supplemented with some specific substance) that cannot replicate efficiently in an environment where a particular nutrient required by the mutant strain is scarce. Salmonella A1-R represents such a strain, which is auxotrophic for the amino acids leucine and arginine that are enriched in the tumor but not in normal tissues. Therefore, in the tumor, Salmonella A1-R will grow but not in the normal tissues thereby preventing infections and increasing safety.
Research
The most researched bacteria for cancer therapy are Salmonella, Listeria, and Clostridium. A genetically engineered strain of Salmonella (TAPET-CD) has completed phase 1 clinical trials for patients with stage 4 metastatic cancer. Listeria-based cancer vaccines are currently being produced and are undergoing many clinical trials. Phase I trials of the Clostridium strain called Clostridium novyi (C. novyi-NT) for patients with treatment-refractory tumors or tumors that are unresponsive to treatment is currently underway.
See also
Gene targeting
Chemotherapy
Immunotherapy
BCG Vaccine
Virotherapy
References
Bacteria and humans
Biological engineering
Biotechnology
Biotechnology products
Biopharmaceuticals
Pharmaceutical industry
Life sciences industry
Specialty drugs
Pharmacy | Tumor-homing bacteria | [
"Chemistry",
"Engineering",
"Biology"
] | 1,398 | [
"Pharmacology",
"Biological engineering",
"Specialty drugs",
"Life sciences industry",
"Biotechnology products",
"Pharmacy",
"Pharmaceutical industry",
"Biotechnology",
"nan",
"Bacteria",
"Bacteria and humans",
"Biopharmaceuticals"
] |
63,605,501 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar%20Crater%20Radio%20Telescope |
The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) is a proposal by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) to create an ultra-long-wavelength (that is, wavelengths greater than 10 m, corresponding to frequencies below 30 MHz) radio telescope inside a lunar crater on the far side of the Moon.
The reason for building the LCRT on the far side of the Moon would be to avoid interference faced by radio telescopes on the Earth's surface. The Moon would block many sources of radio interference originating on Earth, and would avoid the problems that come from Earth's ionosphere at long radio wavelengths.
If completed, the telescope would have a structural diameter of 1.3 km, and the reflector would be 350m in diameter. Robotic lift wires and an anchoring system would enable origami deployment of the parabolic reflector.
History
A previous proposal put the reflector size at 1 km diameter. In 2021, the LCRT project went into phase II of development in the NIAC program and was awarded $500,000 to continue work. As of 2023, work on the lunar crater radio telescope is ongoing at Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Construction
To be sensitive to long radio wavelengths, the LCRT would need to be huge. The idea is to create an antenna over half-a-mile (1 kilometer) wide in a crater over 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide. The biggest single-dish radio telescopes on Earth – like the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China and the now-inoperative 305-meter-wide Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico – were built inside natural bowl-like depressions in the landscape to provide a support structure.
This class of radio telescope uses thousands of reflecting panels suspended inside the depression to make the entire dish’s surface reflective to radio waves. The receiver then hangs via a system of cables at a focal point over the dish, anchored by towers at the dish’s perimeter, to measure the radio waves bouncing off the curved surface below. But despite its size and complexity, even FAST is not sensitive to radio wavelengths longer than about 14 feet (4.3 meters).
The LCRT concept eliminates the need to transport prohibitively heavy material to the Moon and utilizes robots to automate the construction process. Instead of using thousands of reflective panels to focus incoming radio waves, the LCRT would be made of thin wire mesh in the center of the crater. One spacecraft would deliver the mesh, and a separate lander would deposit DuAxel rovers to build the dish over several days or weeks.
DuAxel, a robotic concept being developed at JPL, is composed of two single-axle rovers (called Axel) that can undock from each other but stay connected via a tether. One half would act as an anchor at the rim of the crater as the other rappels down to do the building.
Another concept, that reduces both cost and complexity by almost half, is using a Lift Wire Deployment and Anchoring System for LCRT, as shown in picture.
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon - NASA NIAC Symposium 2022
Radio telescopes
Space telescopes
Proposed NASA space probes
Missions to the Moon | Lunar Crater Radio Telescope | [
"Astronomy"
] | 666 | [
"Space telescopes"
] |
63,607,722 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%20721 | NGC 721 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Andromeda about 250 million light years from the Milky Way. It was discovered by the Prussian astronomer Heinrich d'Arrest in 1862.
See also
List of NGC objects (1–1000)
References
Barred spiral galaxies
Andromeda (constellation)
0721
007097 | NGC 721 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 68 | [
"Andromeda (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
63,607,740 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael%20Bach%20%28vision%20scientist%29 | Michael Bach (born 10 April 1950) is a German scientist who researches ophthalmology, clinical electroencephalography, clinical electroretinography, visual acuity testing, and visual perception. Bach is the creator of website Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena, which began receiving over two million hits a day in 2005.
Life and work
Bach was born in Berlin on 10 April 1950. In 1956, he moved with his family to Dortmund, where he attended school. From 1970 to 1972, Bach completed an undergraduate degree in physics at Ruhr University Bochum, then moved to the University of Freiburg, where he studied for a Master's degree in physics. In 1975, he began a part-time position running an electronics workshop in the Department of Psychology, then became a full-time research assistant in the Department of Neurology in 1978. Bach was awarded his Master's in physics in 1977 and his PhD, also in physics, in 1981, on the visual system. In 1981 he moved into a full-time position in the Department of Ophthalmology, rising to Professor in 1998, and being appointed as Head of Section Visual Function/Electrophysiology at the University Eye Hospital in 1999. After Bach's retirement in 2015 he became an Emeritus Scientist, continuing his research.
In 1996, Bach began his service to the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision, establishing, with others, standards for clinical electroencephalography, electroretinography and electrooculography, and becoming the society's president from 2004 to 2011.
In 1975, Bach married Ulrike Röhling. They have three adult children and one grandchild.
Research
Bach has conducted research in ophthalmology, electroretinography, and visual perception. One strand of his research has been to develop tests of visual acuity, using verbal responding or using brain activity.
As of April 2021, Bach has published 356 scientific papers that have been cited 16602 times, giving him an h-index of 61. According to Neurotree, Bach has 16 academic children and 44 academic grandchildren.
Illusions
Bach began his illusions web site as a hobby some time before 2005. He did not appreciate how popular the site was until he discovered that his internet service provider had suspended his account after it received more than one million hits per day. Bach upgraded his account and continued developing the site.
As of April 2021, Bach's site contained 143 illusions, most interactive, and all with Bach's clear explanations. The site and Bach have won plaudits on the internet, in the news media, and in science journals.
The site has also been used in scientific research into illusions.
Selected works
References
External links
Homepage of Michael Bach
Profile from the Homepage of the Freiburg University Eye Clinic
Profile from the Homepage of GWUP, the German equivalent of The Skeptics Society and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Homepage of Bach's Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions
Homepage of Bach's on-line tests of visual acuity (‘FrACT’)
1950 births
20th-century German biologists
21st-century German scientists
German biophysicists
German ophthalmologists
Academic staff of the University of Freiburg
Scientists from Berlin
Vision scientists
Optical illusions
Living people | Michael Bach (vision scientist) | [
"Physics"
] | 664 | [
"Optical phenomena",
"Physical phenomena",
"Optical illusions"
] |
63,607,768 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%20606 | NGC 606 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the Pisces constellation about 470 million light-years from the Milky Way. It was discovered by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1881.
One supernova has been observed in NGC 606: SN 2016fmt (type II, mag. 17.8).
See also
List of NGC objects (1–1000)
References
External links
0606
Barred spiral galaxies
Pisces (constellation)
005874
Discoveries by Édouard Stephan | NGC 606 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 101 | [
"Pisces (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
63,608,174 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%20History%20of%20Folding%20in%20Mathematics | A History of Folding in Mathematics: Mathematizing the Margins is a book in the history of mathematics on the mathematics of paper folding. It was written by Michael Friedman and published in 2018 by Birkhäuser as volume 59 of their Historical Studies series.
Topics
The book consists of six chapters, the first of which introduces the problem, sets it in the context of the investigation of the mathematical strength of straightedge and compass constructions, and introduces one of the major themes of the book, the relegation of paper folding to recreational mathematics as this sort of investigation fell out of favor among professional mathematicians, and its more recent resurrection as a serious topic of investigation. As a work of history, the book follows Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in making a distinction between epistemic objects, the not-yet-fully-defined subjects of scientific investigation,
and technical objects, the tools used in these investigations, and it links the perceived technicality of folding with its fall from mathematical favor.
The remaining chapters are organized chronologically, beginning in the 16th century and the second chapter. This chapter includes the work of Albrecht Dürer on polyhedral nets, arrangements of polygons in the plane that can be folded to form a given polyhedron, and of Luca Pacioli on the use of folding to replace the compass and straightedge in geometric constructions; it also discusses the history of paper, and paper folding in the context of bookbinding. The third chapter discusses the confluence of Arabic and European mathematics, into the 18th century, with topics including the symmetries of folded objects and the attempted use of folding to prove the parallel postulate. Although Eugenio Beltrami continued to use folded models to investigate non-Euclidean geometry into the 19th century, the fourth chapter of the book argues that other 19th-century uses of folding were more pedagogical, including the use of folded models to demonstrate mathematical concepts, their applications in chemistry, and the introduction of folding into kindergarten programs by Friedrich Fröbel. The late 19th century also saw the publication in India and then the west of the book Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding, by T. Sundara Row.
The final two chapters concern the 20th century and current topics of research in this area. They include work on formalizing paper folding as a form of axiomatic geometry beginning with Margherita Piazzola Beloch, the work of Wilhelm Ahrens in recreational mathematics, and the community of mathematical researchers coming together through the series of International Meetings of Origami Science and Technology (now known as the International Conference on Origami in Science, Math, and Education), and through works popularizing this area within mathematics such as the book Geometric Folding Algorithms by Erik Demaine and Joseph O'Rourke. Appendices include a translation of Beloch's work in this area, and a response to the book The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Gilles Deleuze.
Audience and reception
In reviewing the book, mathematicians Thomas Sonar and James J. Tattersall recommend the book to a general audience interested in mathematics and its history, and reviewer James J. Tattersall writes that it contains "a wealth of mathematical and historical information on a wide selection of topics".
Reviewer William J. Satzer, also a mathematician, disagrees on the target audience, writing that although the book would be of interest to historians of mathematics, it would make difficult reading for others because its topics are too loosely connected. Satzer also faults the book for its omission of Japanese and Chinese threads in its tapestry. On the other hand, Argentine origami book author Laura Rozenberg, despite admitting to skipping over the more mathematical parts of the story, says it "can be read by the non-mathematician without pausing", writing that it felt that "Friedman had read our minds and had decided to indulge us with answers to problems that have beset paperfolding aficionados for years". And historian Anne Por, reviewing the book, writes that "this work is not only highly informative but also particularly pleasant to read."
References
Paper folding
Books about the history of mathematics
2018 non-fiction books
Birkhäuser books | A History of Folding in Mathematics | [
"Mathematics"
] | 849 | [
"Recreational mathematics",
"Paper folding"
] |
63,609,966 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangura%20Gas%20Field | Bangura Gas Field () is a natural gas field located in Comilla, Bangladesh. It is controlled by Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (BAPEX).
Location
Bangura Gas Field is located in Muradnagar Upazila, Comilla district, Chittagong Division. It is located about away from the Srikail gas field. These two fields cover an area of .
See also
List of natural gas fields in Bangladesh
Bangladesh Gas Fields Company Limited
Gas Transmission Company Limited
References
1996 establishments in Bangladesh
Natural gas fields in Bangladesh | Bangura Gas Field | [
"Chemistry"
] | 110 | [
"Petroleum",
"Petroleum stubs"
] |
63,610,220 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco%20industry%20playbook | The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer. Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.
A 1969 R. J. Reynolds internal memorandum noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public."
In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway documented the way that tobacco companies had campaigned over several decades to cast doubt on the scientific evidence of harm caused by their products, and noted the same techniques being used by other industries whose harmful products were targets of regulatory and environmental efforts. This is often linked to climate change denialism promoted by the fossil fuel industry: the same tactics were employed by fossil fuel groups such as the American Petroleum Institute to cast doubt on climate science from the 1990s and some of the same PR firms and individuals engaged to claim that tobacco smoking was safe, were later recruited to attack climate science.
History
The strategy was initiated at a crisis meeting between US tobacco executives and John Hill, of public relations company Hill & Knowlton, at the New York Plaza Hotel, in 1953, following the Reader's Digest'''s précis of an article from the Christian Herald titled "Cancer by the Carton", highlighting the emergent findings of epidemiologists including Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. It led to the 1954 publication of A Frank Statement, an advertisement designed to cast doubt on the science showing serious health effects from smoking.
Tactics included:
"Fear, uncertainty and doubt", including funding studies designed to undermine scientific consensus on the health effects of tobacco and characterising findings of harm as "junk science";
Astroturfing;
Attacking and intimidating opponents;
Lobbying and political talking points;
Emphasising industry self-regulation and personal responsibility.
Documents such as Bad Science: A Resource Book were used to promulgate talking points intended to cast doubt on scientific independence and political interference.
Influence
The playbook has been adopted by the fossil fuel industry, in its efforts to stave off global action on climate change, and by those seeking to undermine the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more generally. The manufacture and promotion of uncertainty, especially, has been identified as inspired directly by the tobacco industry.
Recognising that it had little or no credibility with the public, and concerned about mounting pressure to act on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), the tobacco industry actively recruited fellow enemies of the EPA, setting up the "Advancement of Sound Science Coalition" (TASSC), a fake grassroots group. Its first director was Steve Milloy, previously of APCO, the consultancy firm employed by Philip Morris to set up TASSC. Milloy subsequently set up junkscience.com, a website which equates environmentalists with Nazis and now promotes climate change denial. Many of the consultants who worked for the tobacco industry, have also worked for fossil fuel companies against action on climate change. TASSC hired Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer, both now prominent in climate change denial. Greg Zimmerman found a 2015 presentation titled "Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars" by Richard Reavey of Cloud Peak Energy (and formerly of Philip Morris) in which Reavey explicitly acknowledged the parallels and urged fellow coal executives to accept the facts of climate change and work with regulators on solutions that would preserve the industry. Both Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz are prominent figures in climate change denial who previously worked for the tobacco industry.
Environmentalist George Monbiot identifies many groups that were funded by tobacco firms and subsequently by Exxon and other fossil fuel companies, and now actively take part in climate change denial, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Independent Institute, and George Mason University's Law and Economics Centre.
Opponents of vaping also identify elements of the tobacco playbook in the e-cigarette industry's response to health concerns. Tobacco companies took stakes in soft drinks companies and used the same tactics around colours and flavours that they had used to target young potential smokers. The soft drinks industry's attempts to avoid sugary beverage taxes and other government action to reduce obesity draws upon elements of the tobacco playbook, including use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs as a PR strategy. Research contracts issued as part of CSR programmes allow soft drinks manufacturers to bury inconvenient results.
A 2019 article in the Emory Law Journal made parallels to attempts by the National Football League to downplay the issue of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in American football, with the New York Times'' noting a number of tobacco figures involved in the NFL's defence.
The World Health Organization has subsequently published a tobacco control playbook.
The public relations strategies of Big Tech companies have often been compared with the tobacco industry playbook.
See also
Health effects of tobacco
Disinformation
Corporate propaganda
Fossil fuels lobby
ExxonMobil climate change denial
COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy
References
Further reading
The Disinformation Playbook – How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety (www.ucsusa.org)
Cancer by the carton (1952)
Tobacco industry
.
Disinformation
Disinformation operations
Scientific controversies
Climate change controversies
Petroleum industry
Petroleum politics
Medical controversies
Politics of climate change
Lobbying
Lobbying in the United States | Tobacco industry playbook | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,224 | [
"Petroleum industry",
"Petroleum",
"Chemical process engineering",
"Petroleum politics"
] |
63,610,265 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhola%20North-1%20Gas%20Field | Bhola North-1 Gas Field () is a natural gas field located in Bhola, Bangladesh. It is controlled by Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (BAPEX).
Location
Bhola North-1 gas field is located at Bheduria in Bhola district, Barisal Division. It is located 32 km away from Shahbazpur gas field. It is estimated to have 600 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas reserved in this field.
See also
List of natural gas fields in Bangladesh
Bangladesh Gas Fields Company Limited
Gas Transmission Company Limited
References
2018 establishments
Natural gas fields in Bangladesh
Economy of Barisal | Bhola North-1 Gas Field | [
"Chemistry"
] | 131 | [
"Petroleum",
"Petroleum stubs"
] |
63,610,516 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State%20Research%20Institute%20Kristall | GosNII «Kristall» OJSC (Gosudarstvenny Nauchno-Issledovatel'skiy Institut «Kristall», State-Owned Scientific-Research Institute "Crystal") (AKA Factory 80) is a chemical factory in Dzerzhinsk (formerly Rastyapino), Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It manufactures explosives and non-standard chemical equipment.
History
The factory was opened in 1953 and is part of the Sverdlova factory. In 2012 "Kristall" OJSC became part of NPO Pyrotechnic Systems (Moscow region) OJSC, a subdivision of the NPK Tekhmash OJSC holding company, which is in turn part of military industrial giant Rostec. It makes industrial explosives for use in mining, military propellants and ammunition, and medicines made from chemical derivatives. It is also engaged in the research & development and testing of explosives.
Disasters
An explosion at the factory in August 2018 killed 3 people instantly, followed by 2 more who died in hospital.
Another explosion on June 1, 2019, completely destroyed the processing facility, caused a fire 100 square meters in area, and injured 38 workers and 41 residents. Fifteen people were hospitalised for wounds caused by flying shards of broken glass, but no deaths were reported. Five workers were inside the facility when the explosion occurred, but all were evacuated safely.
References
Chemical companies established in 1953
Defence companies of Russia
1953 establishments in the Soviet Union
Chemical companies of the Soviet Union
Defence companies of the Soviet Union
Research institutes in the Soviet Union
Chemical research institutes | State Research Institute Kristall | [
"Chemistry"
] | 332 | [
"Chemical research institutes",
"Chemistry organization stubs"
] |
63,610,726 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Daihatsu%20engines | The Daihatsu engines are varieties of automobile engines that used mainly for Daihatsu's own vehicles, Toyota, Perodua and numerous brands around the world.
A
The Daihatsu A-series engine is a range of 0.55 L to 0.62 L compact inline-two petrol engines.
C
The Daihatsu C-series engine is a range of 0.84 L to 1.0 L inline-three petrol and diesel engines.
D
The Daihatsu D-series is a series of water-cooled OHV 8-valve inline-four swirl chamber diesel engines.
DE
Displacement: 2270 cc
Bore and stroke: 83.3 mm x 104.0 mm
Power output: 63 PS @3600rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu DO13T
Daihatsu D200
Daihatsu Light Bus (SV22N/SV27N)
DG
Displacement: 2530 cc
Bore and stroke: 88.0 mm x 104.0 mm
Compression ratio: 21.0:1
Power output: 62-75 PS @3300-3500rpm
Torque output: 135-172 N.m @2200-2400rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu D300
Daihatsu Delta (DV26/SV18L/SV26/V20/V22/V24)
Daihatsu Light Bus (SV32N/SV37N)
Daihatsu Taft (F50)
DL
Displacement: 2765 cc
Bore and stroke: 92.0 mm x 104.0 mm
Naturally aspirated (DL42/43), turbodiesel (DL50/51), turbodiesel with intercooler (DL52/62)
Power output: 69-115 PS @3400-3800rpm
Torque output: 152-255 N.m @1900-2200rpm
Compression ratio: 21.2:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Delta (V57/58/82/83)
Daihatsu Rugger (F70/75)
Daihatsu Taft (F60)
Note: There was also available an unnamed 1484 cc water-cooled four cylinder diesel engine with power output 40 PS at 3800 rpm fitted to the 1960-1962 Daihatsu D150 truck, which appeared before the DE engine.
E
The Daihatsu E-series engine is a range of 0.5 L to 1.0 L inline-three petrol engines.
F
The Daihatsu F-series engine is a series of OHV 8-valve water-cooled inline-four engine.
FA
Displacement: 1490 cc
Bore and stroke: 78.0 mm x 78.0 mm
Compression ratio: 8.2:1.
Power output: 68-70 PS @4800rpm
Torque: 128 N.m @3600rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu BO/CF/CM
Daihatsu Delta 1500
Daihatsu F100/F175/Daihatsu Hi-Line
Daihatsu Light Bus DV200N/SV151N/SV16N
Daihatsu V100/150/200
FB
Displacement: 1861 cc
Power output: 80-85 PS @4600rpm
Torque output: 152 N.m
Applications:
Daihatsu CO
Daihatsu Delta 2000
Daihatsu F200
Daihatsu Light Bus DV201N/NR250/NR251/SV20N
Daihatsu V200
FC
Displacement: 797 cc
Bore and stroke: 62.0 mm x 66.0 mm.
39-41 PS @5000rpm & 63.7 N.m @3500 rpm.
Applications:
Daihatsu Compagno 800
Daihatsu New Line
50 PS @6500 rpm
Application:
Daihatsu Sport Vignale (concept car)
FD
Displacement: 2433 cc
Power output: 95 PS
Applications:
Daihatsu Light Bus DV30N/SV30N/SV35N
Daihatsu V300
FE
Displacement: 958 cc
Bore and stroke: 68.0 mm x 66.0 mm
Single carburettor
Compression ratio: 7.8:1
Power & torque: at 5500 rpm, at 4000 rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Compagno 1000
Daihatsu Consorte 1000 HL/TL/PS
Daihatsu Taft (F10)
Twin-carburretor
Compression ratio: 9.5:1
Power & torque: at 6500 rpm, at 4500 rpm
Application:
Daihatsu Compagno Spider/1000GT
Fuel injection (65 PS)
Application:
Daihatsu Compagno 1000GT Injection
R92A/B
Racing engines based from bored up FE engine, the displacement was increased from 958 cc to 1261 cc with new 78.0 mm bore size from FA engine. This new engine was known as R92A and used for powering the 1965-1966 Daihatsu P3 and 1967 Daihatsu P5 race cars. The cylinder head was also modified from 8-valve OHV to 16-valve DOHC, an extremely rare configuration at that time. At first the power output was originally which was then increased to at 8000 rpm.
In 1968, the engine displacement was increased again to 1298 cc with new bore and strokes of 78.5 mm x 67.1 mm and also renamed to R92B. Equipped with new two Mikuni-Solex 50PHH carburettors, the power also increased to at 8000rpm with 127 N.m at 7000 rpm of torque.
H
The Daihatsu H-series engine is a series of SOHC 16-valve inline-four water-cooled petrol engine, ranging from 1.3 L to 1.6 L.
J
The Daihatsu J-series engine is a series of inline-four engines, which was fitted with a twin scroll turbo and intercooler in the Copen, that was specially developed for Daihatsu's kei cars in combination with Yamaha. It was produced from August 1994 to August 2012.
This was the first and last inline-four engine for Daihatsu's kei cars, debuted in the Daihatsu Mira L502 that was launched in September 1994. The Second Generation Copen uses the KF-DET turbocharged I3, a Daihatsu K-series engine.
K
The Daihatsu K3/KJ/KSZ engine is a series of 1.0 L to 1.5 L inline four petrol engines.
KF
The Daihatsu KF engine is a series of 658 cc inline-three cylinder DOHC 12 valve water-cooled engine, designed for kei cars. This engine replacing the old EF series engines.
KR
A 996 cc inline-three cylinder engine series designed and produced by Daihatsu (also by Toyota as 1KR-FE), applied in numerous Daihatsu Global A Segment Platform and DNGA city cars.
NR
A series of inline-four DOHC engine with Dual VVT-i, ranging from 1.2 L to 1.5 L. Even though this engine is part of Toyota's engine family, but there are two versions of this engine family. The Daihatsu version is produced at Daihatsu's plant in Indonesia, by Perodua in Malaysia and later in Thailand by Toyota. It is using lower cost low carbon steel material and labelled with "VE" code (a code for Daihatsu engines with VVT-i), while the Toyota version is using more expensive and lighter aluminium alloy material and labelled with "FE" code (Toyota's code for narrow-angle DOHC engine with fuel injection). This Daihatsu version is only fitted to Daihatsu's developed cars, intended for developing markets. A version with "VEX" code is used in conjunction with an electric motor in a hybrid system.
1NR-VE
Displacement: 1.3 L (1,329 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 72.5 mm × 80.5 mm
Compression Ratio: 11–11.5:1
Maximum Power: 95–98 PS @ 6000rpm
Maximum Torque: 120–122 N⋅m @ 4000–4200rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Xenia/Toyota Avanza (2015–present)
Perodua Bezza (2016–present)
Perodua Myvi/Daihatsu Sirion (2017–present)
Toyota Vios/Yaris sedan (2022–present)
2NR-VE
Displacement: 1.5 L (1,496 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 72.5 mm × 90.6 mm
Compression Ratio: 10.5–11.5:1
Maximum Power: 104–106 PS @ 6000rpm
Maximum Torque: 136–138 N⋅m @ 4200rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Xenia/Toyota Avanza (2015–present)
Daihatsu Terios/Toyota Rush (2017–present)
Perodua Myvi (2017–present)
Perodua Aruz (2019–present)
Daihatsu Grand Max/Toyota LiteAce/TownAce/Mazda Bongo (2020–present)
Perodua Alza (2022–present)
Toyota Veloz (2022–present)
Toyota Vios/Yaris sedan (2022–present)
2NR-VEX
Displacement: 1.5 L (1,496 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 72.5 mm × 90.6 mm
Maximum Power
Engine only: 91 PS @ ????rpm
1NM electric motor: 80 PS @ ????rpm
Combined output: 111 PS @ ????rpm
Maximum Torque
Engine only: 121 N⋅m @ ????rpm
1NM electric motor: 141 N.m @ ????rpm
Applications:
Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid (2023–present)
3NR-VE
Displacement: 1.2 L (1,197 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 72.5 mm × 72.5 mm
Compression Ratio 10.5:1
Maximum Output: 88–94 PS @ 6000rpm
Maximum Torque: 108–110 N⋅m @ 4200rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Sigra/Toyota Calya (2016–present)
Daihatsu Ayla/Toyota Agya/Wigo (2017–2023)
Toyota Yaris Ativ (2022–present)
Single Cylinder
A series of Daihatsu water-cooled single cylinder 4-stroke engines, used for three-wheeled trucks.
GK
Displacement is 736 cc and power output is 14.5 PS.
Daihatsu SK
Daihatsu SSR
GT
Displacement is 744 cc, bore and stroke is 95.0 mm x 105.0 mm, compression ratio is 4.8:1, Power output is 15.8 PS at 3500 rpm and torque 38 Nm at 2000 rpm.
V-Twin
A series of OHV air-cooled 90° v-twin cylinder engines used in various Daihatsu vehicles in 1930s to early 1960s.
2HA
The Daihatsu 2HA engine is a horizontal engine that was developed for Daihatsu Bee (1951-1952).
The 2HA engine was available in two version, 540 cc and 804 cc. The earlier version was a 540 cc, with output and the larger 804 cc available shortly, with output increased to .
GLA
Displacement is 751 cc, bore and stroke is 75.0 mm x 85.0 mm, compression ratio is 6.5:1, power output is 25 PS @3800rpm and torque is 52 N.m @3000rpm.
Daihatsu PF
Daihatsu PL7
Daihatsu SKC
GMA
Displacement is 1135 cc and power output is 35 PS.
Daihatsu BF/BM
Daihatsu CM/CO
Daihatsu PM
Daihatsu RKM
Daihatsu UM
GOB
Displacement is 1477 cc, bore and stroke is 97.0 mm x 100.0 mm, compression ratio is 6.3:1, power output is 45-53 PS.
Daihatsu RKO
Daihatsu UO
Daihatsu Vesta
732 cc
Daihatsu FA
854 cc
Daihatsu SKD
1005 cc
Power output is 30 PS.
Daihatsu RKF
Daihatsu SSH
Daihatsu UF
1431 cc
Daihatsu SX/SSX
WA
WA-VE
An inline-three cylinder engine series designed and produced by Daihatsu.
Displacement: 1.2 L (1,196 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 73.5 mm × 94.0 mm
Compression Ratio: 12.8:1
Maximum Power: 88 PS @ 6,000 rpm
Maximum Torque: 113 N⋅m @ 4,500 rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Rocky / Toyota Raize / Subaru Rex (A200) (2021–present)
Daihatsu Ayla / Toyota Agya (A350) (2023–present)
WA-VEX
Displacement: 1.2 L (1,196 cc)
Bore x Stroke: 73.5 mm × 94.0 mm
Compression Ratio: 12.8:1
Maximum Power: 82 PS @ 5,600 rpm
Maximum Torque: 105 N⋅m @ 3,200 – 5,200 rpm
Applications:
Daihatsu Rocky e-Smart Hybrid / Toyota Raize Hybrid (A200) (2021–present)
Z
The Daihatsu Z-series engine is a series of Daihatsu's two-stroke petrol engines.
ZA
Production years: 1957-1962
Single cylinder
Air-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 249 cc
Bore x stroke: 65.0 mm × 75.0 mm
Maximum output: at 3600-4000 rpm
Maximum torque: at 2400-2500 rpm
Compression ratio: 6.2:1
Application: Daihatsu Midget (DK/DS/MP/MP2)
ZD
Production years: 1959-1971
Single cylinder
Air-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 305 cc
Bore x stroke: 72.0 mm x 75.0 mm
Maximum output: 12 PS @4500rpm
Maximum torque: 21.6 N.m @2500rpm
Compression ratio: 6.2:1
Application: Daihatsu Midget (MP3/MP4/MP5)
ZL
Production years: 1960-1966
Inline-two cylinder
Air-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 17-21 PS @5000rpm
Maximum torque: 27.4 Nm @3000rpm
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Hijet (L/S35)
ZM series
ZM
Production years: 1966-1981
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 23-24 PS @5000rpm
Maximum torque: 34.3 N.m @4000
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Hijet (L36/S36/37/38)
Daihatsu Fellow (L37)
ZM4
Production years: 1970-1972
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 33 PS @6500rpm
Maximum torque: 36.2 N.m @5500
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Fellow Max (L38)
ZM5
Production years: 1970-1972
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Dual carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 40 PS @7200rpm
Maximum torque: 40.2 N.m @6500
Compression ratio: 11.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Fellow Max SS (L38)
ZM6
Production years: 1970-1972
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 26 PS @5500rpm
Maximum torque: 34.3 N.m @4500
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Hijet (S37)
Daihatsu Fellow Buggy (L37PB)
ZM12
Production years: 1972-1976
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Single carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 31 PS @6000rpm
Maximum torque: 36.2 N.m @5000
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Fellow Max (L38)
ZM13
Production years: 1970-1972
Inline-two cylinder
Water-cooled
Dual carburettor
Total displacement: 356 cc
Bore x stroke: 62.0 mm × 59.0 mm
Maximum output: 37 PS @6500rpm
Maximum torque: 40.2 N.m @6000
Compression ratio: 9.0:1
Applications:
Daihatsu Fellow Max SS (L38)
References
Automobile engines
Engines by maker
Daihatsu engines | List of Daihatsu engines | [
"Technology"
] | 3,524 | [
"Engines by maker",
"Engines",
"Automobile engines"
] |
72,288,922 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankering | In aviation, tankering is the practice of loading more fuel than necessary for a trip, to take advantage of lower fuel prices at the airport of origin, or when fuel is in short supply at the destination airport. Tankering increases the weight of the aircraft and therefore total fuel consumption, however it can still reduce costs if the difference in fuel prices is great enough. Fuel prices can vary by over 50% within Europe, with price differences of 20% to 30% between major airports. Modern flight management systems can calculate the optimum amount of fuel to tanker for given origin and destination fuel prices.
In the ECAC area, full tankering is performed on approximately 15% of flights and partial tankering on a further 15% of flights. According to Eurocontrol, tankering on a typical 300nm flight can increase fuel consumption by approximately 2.21%, and tankering on a typical 600nm flight can increase fuel consumption by approximately 4.66%.
Tankering can be limited by a need to arrive with a lower amount of fuel, to avoid exceeding the maximum landing weight, or to avoid cold soaked fuel frost.
While tankering reduces costs for airlines, it increases fuel consumption and therefore carbon emissions. Taxing aviation fuel does not necessarily help reduce fuel consumption, because by increasing the price difference between jurisdictions which tax jet fuel and jurisdictions which do not, it can incentivise tankering.
A European Commission report in 2021 proposed banning tankering, and obliging aircraft to uplift fuel at all EU airports.
See also
Jet fuel
EU aviation fuel taxation
Aviation taxation and subsidies
References
External links
Aircraft operations
Aviation fuels | Tankering | [
"Engineering"
] | 331 | [
"Aviation fuels",
"Aerospace engineering"
] |
72,289,240 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s%20Archive | Anna's Archive is an open source search engine for shadow libraries that was launched by the pseudonymous Anna shortly after law enforcement efforts to shut down Z-Library in 2022. It calls itself "the largest truly open library in human history", and has said it aims to "catalog all the books in existence" and "track humanity's progress toward making all these books easily available in digital form". The site aggregates records from several major shadow libraries, including Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis, as well as other sources. It claims not to be responsible for downloads of copyrighted materials, since it indexes metadata and links to third-party downloads but does not directly host any files. However, it has faced government censorship and legal action from publishers and anti-piracy groups for engaging in large-scale copyright infringement.
Origins
Anna's Archive was created by members of the Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) project, an anonymous effort to mirror shadow libraries that completed a full copy of Z-Library in September 2022. PiLiMi acknowledged that it "deliberately violated the copyright law in most countries" in seeking to preserve these libraries. The project's initial focus was on preservation rather than on making its data searchable. Days after US law enforcement attempted to shut down Z-Library in November of that year, PiLiMi member Anna (also referred to as Anna Archivist) launched Anna's Archive, which initially displayed results from Z-Library and Library Genesis.
Website
The source code for Anna's Archive is released into the public domain under the CC0 license. Its data is distributed in bulk with torrent files so as to make it resilient to website takedowns. The site itself does not host any files, but it links to external downloads provided via third-party servers. It also offers downloads through the IPFS protocol.
Anna's Archive has a two-tiered system of download options in which high-speed downloads are only available to users with a paid membership, while nonmembers must use slower options with browser verification to prevent abuse by bots. It describes itself as a nonprofit, claiming that donations and membership fees are mostly spent on server infrastructure and that none are personally used by the site's operators. Memberships and monetary rewards are given to some volunteer contributors.
As of January 15, 2025, Anna's Archive includes 40,369,782 books and 98,401,746 papers, and its unified list of torrents totals roughly one petabyte in size. It lists Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, the Internet Archive, DuXiu, MagzDB, and Nexus/STC among its "source libraries", and Open Library and WorldCat as metadata-only sources.
Censorship and legal issues
United States
In October 2023, Anna's Archive was reported to have scraped the entirety of WorldCat, the world's largest bibliographic database, and made its proprietary data freely available, which Anna described as "a major milestone in mapping out all the books in the world". OCLC, one of WorldCat's maintainers, responded by filing a lawsuit against the site in an Ohio federal court on January 12, 2024, claiming the scrape was achieved through cyberattacks on its servers. It sought over $5 million in total damages and an injunction to curtail the site's operations. OCLC clarified that although its internal systems were not breached, it believes the site's actions legally constitute hacking. The only named defendant in the suit denied any involvement with the scrape or Anna's Archive. Technology writer Glyn Moody criticized the suit as "costly and pointless", saying it went against OCLC's stated mission of making information accessible.
In March 2024, a group of authors filed a lawsuit against Nvidia in a San Francisco federal court for allegedly training its generative AI platform NeMo on the Books3 dataset, which includes copyrighted data from several shadow libraries, Anna's Archive among them. In the company's response, it disputed the characterization of those sites as shadow libraries, despite Anna's Archive's own use of the term.
In July 2024, in the wake of the OCLC lawsuit, Anna's Archive's .org mirror was temporarily replaced with a new .gs mirror to avoid falling under US jurisdiction; however, shortly afterwards, the .gs domain was suspended and the mirror reverted to the original .org domain.
Anna's Archive domains appeared in both the 2023 and 2024 Notorious Markets List of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which identifies online and real-world markets that allegedly engage in or facilitate large-scale copyright and trademark infringement. These reports describe the site as related to Sci-Hub and Library Genesis. In response to a request for comment by the Office on its 2023 List, the Association of American Publishers identified Anna's Archive as an infringing site, and analyzed its cryptocurrency wallets to find a total of $29,596.21 in received funds as of July 2023.
Netherlands
In March 2024, the Rotterdam District Court ordered major internet service providers in the Netherlands to block Anna's Archive and Library Genesis due to a request by anti-piracy group BREIN. The order was "dynamic", meaning that if the blocked sites changed domains or IP addresses in the future, ISPs would be obligated to update their blocks.
Italy
In January 2024, Italy's national communications agency ordered ISPs in the country to block Anna's Archive due to a copyright complaint by the Italian Publishers Association. An investigation by the country's Digital Services Directorate confirmed the presence of copyrighted material on the site and found that some of its servers were likely owned by Ukrainian hosting provider Epinatura LLC, but failed to uncover the identity of its operators.
United Kingdom
In December 2024, the UK's Publishers Association won an order from the High Court of Justice requiring major ISPs to block Anna's Archive and other copyright-infringing sites, extending a list of sites blocked since 2015 under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. The Association said it identified over one million records of copyrighted books and journal articles on Anna's Archive domains.
Other censorship
Anna's Archive was among Google Search's ten most reported domains for DMCA takedown as of June 2024. It has consistently been the most targeted site of Dutch anti-piracy service Link-Busters, which sends takedown notices to Google and other search engines on behalf of major publishers.
In January 2025, the messaging app Telegram suspended Anna's Archive and shut down its channel for copyright infringement, despite the team reportedly taking precautions to avoid infringing posts on the app. Z-Library's Telegram channel was suspended the same week, and neither was alerted of the action.
Notes
References
External links
PiLiMi team website (via Wayback Machine; live redirects to Datasets - Anna's Archive)
Anna's Blog
Book websites
Digital libraries
Ebooks
File sharing communities
Free search engine software
Intellectual property activism
Open access projects
Shadow libraries
Internet properties established in 2022
Internet censorship | Anna's Archive | [
"Technology"
] | 1,475 | [
"File sharing communities",
"Computing websites"
] |
72,289,472 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus%20Ace | The OnePlus Ace is a series of Android-based smartphones manufactured by OnePlus. OnePlus Ace was unveiled on April 21, 2022, OnePlus Ace Pro was unveiled on August 9, 2022, and OnePlus Ace Racing was unveiled on May 17, 2022.
Design
The front of the OnePlus Ace and Ace Pro is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, while the OnePlus Ace Racing features an unspecified glass. The back of the OnePlus Ace and Ace Racing is made of plastic, on the other hand the back of the OnePlus Ace Pro is made of glass. All three models feature a plastic frame.
The back design of the OnePlus Ace Racing and Ace Pro is similar to OnePlus 10 Pro.
International variants
The OnePlus Ace is confirmed to be the Chinese version of the OnePlus 10R with identical specs. The OnePlus Ace Pro also has identical specs to the OnePlus 10T and it is possible to change from one version to the other through first unlocking the phone and then flashing the firmware.
Specifications
Hardware
Display
The OnePlus Ace Pro features a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 and a variable refresh rate up to a maximum 120 Hz. The display also has HDR10+ support and a peak brightness of 950 nits.
Performance
The OnePlus Ace has a MediaTek Dimensity 8100-Max CPU, meanwhile the OnePlus Ace Pro is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The OnePlus Pro has three memory configurations: 8 GB RAM and 128 GB memory, 12 GB RAM and 256 GB memory, and 12 GB RAM and 512 GB memory. The OnePlus Ace Pro has three memory configurations: 12 GB RAM and 256 GB memory, 16 GB RAM and 256 GB memory, and 16 GB RAM and 512 GB memory. All memory is UFS 3.1. Both phones have 5G support and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity.
Connectivity
The OnePlus Ace and OnePlus Ace Pro have both 5G support and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. They feature USB type-C 2.0 connector. Both Ace phones have NFC and Bluetooth 5.2.
Battery
The OnePlus Ace and One Plus Ace Pro feature non-removeable Li-Po batteries. The batteries are optimized with OnePlus’s proprietary Warp Charge technology referred to as SUPERVOOC. The OnePlus Ace has a 4500 mAh battery and the OnePlus Ace Pro has a 4800 mAh battery. Finally, the OnePlus Ace Pro is compatible with the company's Warp Charge 30T fast charging technology and includes a 150 W charger.
Camera
The smartphones come with a triple camera setup on the rear that includes a 50 MP primary shooter with OIS, 8 MP ultra-wide-angle lens and 2 MP macro camera. It also features a 16 MP selfie shooter housed in the punch hole on the front. The primary camera can record up to 4K videos @60 fps and 1080p videos @60 fps. The AI feature on the OnePlus Ace Pro automatically adjusts settings depending on the subject. OnePlus has also provided Pro Mode and Nightscape mode to take pictures in low-light conditions.
Software
The OnePlus Ace and OnePlus Ace Pro feature ColorOS, parent company Oppo's custom UI. They were released with Android 12 and currently run on the Android 14 as of this date (10 August 2024). Users also have access to the company's own app store.
References
OnePlus mobile phones
Phablets
Mobile phones introduced in 2022
Mobile phones with multiple rear cameras
Mobile phones with 4K video recording | OnePlus Ace | [
"Technology"
] | 786 | [
"Crossover devices",
"Phablets"
] |
72,291,862 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA%204677 | LGA 4677 (Socket E) is a zero insertion force flip-chip land grid array (LGA) CPU socket designed by Intel, compatible with Sapphire Rapids server and workstation processors, which was released in January 2023.
Features
Support for PCI Express 5.0 and Direct Media Interface 4.0
Supports 8 channels of DDR5 RAM with error correction code support
Intel Smart Sound Technology that provides dedicated audio voice processing to support voice wake functions is currently available only on the W790 chipset.
Chipsets
See also
List of Intel microprocessors
List of Intel chipsets
References
Intel CPU sockets | LGA 4677 | [
"Technology"
] | 127 | [
"Computing stubs",
"Computer hardware stubs"
] |
72,292,745 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%20Chaleff | Paul Chaleff (born 1947) is an American ceramist and professor emeritus of Fine Arts at Hofstra University. He is considered a pioneer of the revival of wood-fired ceramics in the US and credited as one of the first to use wood-burning dragon kilns in the style of the anagama tradition. He is best known as an innovator of large-scale ceramic sculpture. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art Department of Architecture and Design, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Paul Chaleff's work was strongly influenced by master potter Takeshi Nakazato. In 1989, Chaleff began collaborating with sculptor Sir Anthony Caro. Together they created nearly 50 works, both figurative and abstract. Caro's sculpture has had a direct influence on Chaleff's work as has the sculpture of Isamu Noguchi, and the ceramics of John Mason and Lucie Rie. Chaleff has also been recognized as an innovator of large-scale ceramic sculpture. The strength of his works stems from their being rough, gestural, split, and impure while remaining elegant.
Education
Chaleff attended the Bronx High School of Science. In 1968, while studying biology at the City College of New York, Chaleff survived a drowning accident that took his friend's life. He graduated in 1969 with a degree in Fine Arts. In 1971, Chaleff received his Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Design from City College of New York. In 1975 he traveled to Japan to study Japanese pottery and wood-burning kiln design and returned to New York in 1977 where he built a studio and kilns in Pine Plains.
Career
Chaleff's anagama kiln was one of the first in the US. In 1980, the Museum of Modern Art purchased and exhibited his work from that kiln. In 1980, his wood-fired work was showcased at an official State dinner at the White House. Between 1989 and 2000, Chaleff collaborated on a series of clay sculptures with Sir Anthony Caro in his studio, first in Pine Plains and then Ancram. In 1995, he participated in Fire and Clay, a symposium of international clay sculptors held in Iksan. In 1997, Chaleff accepted a professorship from Hofstra University, where he directed the ceramics program until retirement in 2021.
Museum collections
Chaleff's work is represented in the following museum collections.
Museum of Modern Art, Department of Architecture and Design, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
National Museum of American Art (Washington, DC)
Carnegie Museum of Art (Pennsylvania)
Yale University Art Gallery
Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania)
Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey)
Amore-Pacific Museum of Art (Korea)
Brooklyn Museum
Museum of Arts and Design (New York City)
Everson Museum
Grounds For Sculpture (New Jersey)
Longhouse Foundation (East Hampton, New York)
Boise Art Museum
Racine Art Museum
Arkansas Art Center
Rockefeller University
Allentown Museum of Art (Pennsylvania)
University of Colorado Art Museum (Bolder)
University of Iowa Museum of Art (Iowa City)
Crocker Art Museum (California)
American Museum of Ceramic Art (California)
Arizona State University Museum of Art (Tempe)
Mills College (California)
Thayer Academy (Massachusetts)
Muju Sculpture Park (Korea)
Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (California)
City College of New York (New York City)
Studio Potter Collection (New Hampshire)
Arrowmount School of Arts and Crafts
References
External links
Katonah Museum of Art
Hofstra University
The Marks Project
Noguchi Museum
Paul Challeff Official Site
Museum of Modern Art, Architecture and Design Collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sara Japanese Pottery
Elena Zang Gallery
1947 births
Living people
20th-century American ceramists
21st-century American ceramists
20th-century American sculptors
21st-century American sculptors
Artists from New York City
Kilns
Hofstra University faculty
Japanese pottery
American male sculptors
City College of New York alumni
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
People from Columbia County, New York
People from Dutchess County, New York
The Bronx High School of Science alumni | Paul Chaleff | [
"Chemistry",
"Engineering"
] | 868 | [
"Chemical equipment",
"Kilns"
] |
72,292,766 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion%20of%20Kate%20Moss | The illusion of Kate Moss is an art piece first shown at the conclusion of the Alexander McQueen runway show The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter2006). It consists of a short film of English model Kate Moss dancing slowly while wearing a long, billowing gown of white chiffon, projected life-size within a glass pyramid in the centre of the show's catwalk. Although sometimes referred to as a hologram, the illusion was made using a 19th-century theatre technique called Pepper's ghost.
McQueen conceived the illusion as a gesture of support for Moss; she was a close friend of his and was embroiled in a drug-related scandal at the time of the Widows show. It is regarded by many critics as the highlight of the Widows runway show, and it has been the subject of a great deal of academic analysis, particularly as a wedding dress and as a memento mori. The illusion appeared in both versions of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective exhibition of McQueen's designs.
Background
British designer Alexander McQueen was known in the fashion industry for dramatic, theatrical fashion shows featuring imaginative, sometimes controversial designs. He was a close friend of English model Kate Moss, who had walked in several of his previous shows, including La Poupée (Spring/Summer1997) and Voss (Spring/Summer2001). Moss retired from runway modelling in 2004 to focus on advertising contracts and other ventures. In 2005, she became caught up in controversy after images of her allegedly using drugs were leaked to the media, and several companies cancelled lucrative contracts with her.
McQueen actively supported Moss throughout the controversy. He argued that in his opinion, many journalists also regularly used drugs, making their criticism hypocritical. He wore a T-shirt with the words "We love you Kate!" when he appeared at the end of the runway show for Neptune (Spring/Summer2006). As a further gesture of support, he developed the idea of projecting her into the closing act of upcoming show, The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter2006), seeking "to show that she was more ethereal, bigger than the situation she was in".
Illusion
The illusion played as the finale of the runway show for The Widows of Culloden on 3 March 2006 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. The stage was formed by a square of rough wood with a large glass pyramid in its centre, leaving a catwalk around the outside for the models to walk. After the final model exited the runway, the lights were dimmed and the illusion was projected within the central pyramid. The illusion, sometimes inaccurately described as a hologram, used a 19th-century theatre technique called Pepper's ghost to display a life-sized projection of Kate Moss wearing a billowing chiffon dress. In the Pepper's ghost technique, a brightly lit figure out of sight of the audience is partially reflected on an angled pane of glass, which makes the semi-transparent figure appear to be on the stage.
The illusion was executed as a collaboration between British film director Baillie Walsh, production designer Joseph Bennett, post-production company Glassworks, and production duo Gainsbury & Whiting. Glassworks planned the illusion by creating a computer-generated render of the entire show space, including the seating and the runway. This enabled them to visualise the illusion from multiple viewpoints to confirm that it would look correct no matter where it was viewed from. The performance for Widows was inspired in part by serpentine dance, a type of stage performance from the 1890s that utilised billowing fabric and dramatic lighting, created by dancer Loie Fuller.
Filming the effect was difficult, went over budget and took two hours. Moss was suspended in a harness and wind machines were used to create the movement of her dress. The flowing material made it difficult for the production designers to conceal the edges of the illusion. Because the pyramid was visible to the audience from all angles, it was more challenging to execute than an illusion using only a single field of view. It was the first fashion show to employ this kind of effect; media theorist Jenna Ng speculated that it may have been the first such large-scale 3D projection of a performance.
Reception and legacy
The illusion of Kate Moss is regarded by many critics as the highlight of the Widows runway show. Writing for Vogue, Sarah Mower said that "only Alexander McQueen could provide the astonishing feat of techno-magic that ended his show". Robert McCaffrey, writing in The Fashion Studies Journal, called it "one of McQueen's most enduring and iconic finales". American fashion editor Robin Givhan wrote that "McQueen created a fantasy that made his audience believe in the wizardry of fashion and its ability to move the spirit." Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian called it a "suitably haunting finale". Lisa Armstrong at The Times was more critical, calling it "unspeakably cheesy". Kerry Youmans, a publicist for McQueen, recalled seeing audience members crying upon viewing it. Writing after McQueen's death in 2010, Lorraine Candy, editor-in-chief of Elle, said that "The hologram of Moss... was all we talked about for months afterwards." In 2014, Jessica Andrews of Vanity Fair named it one of the most dramatic runway stunts in history.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A) in London owns a variant of the Kate Moss dress created by McQueen's assistant Sarah Burton for the 2006 wedding of another McQueen employee. Moss wore the original again on the cover of the May 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK. In 2015, the Spanish 15-M movement staged a massive protest via hologram projection, taking specific inspiration from the Kate Moss illusion.
The Kate Moss illusion appeared in Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective exhibition of McQueen's designs shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011 (the Met) and the V&A in 2015. In the original presentation at the Met, the Moss illusion was recreated in miniature, but in the V&A re-staging, it was presented in full size in its own room. According to Sam Gainsbury, who worked on production for the illusion, McQueen had "always wanted to show [the illusion] independently as a work of art", so the team ensured that it was staged that way for the V&A's version of the exhibit.
Analysis
Gothic tropes
Critics have described The Widows of Culloden as an exploration of Gothic literary tropes – particularly melancholy and haunting – via fashion, and the illusion of Kate Moss plays a significant role in this analysis. According to McQueen, the collection took inspiration from Shakespeare's Scottish play Macbeth. Cartner-Morley argued that Moss effectively played the role of Banquo, a character who haunts Macbeth as a ghost throughout the play. Literature professor Catherine Spooner connected the illusion to the visual effects used to portray spirits in the séances of the 19thcentury, and literary scholar Bill Sherman compared the effect on the audience to the "reverie" inspired by ghost stories of the era. Researcher Kate Bethune wrote that the collection's sense of melancholy was "consolidated in its memorable finale".
McCaffrey presented a similar analysis, writing that the illusion of Kate Moss was an example of highly staged Gothic melancholy, playing on the "tensions between beauty and heartache". He contrasted the illusion with the "spine" corset featured in Untitled (Spring/Summer1998), viewing both as memento mori – artistic reminders of the inevitability of death. He saw the corset as an example of overt material horror, whereas the illusion functioned as an aesthetic horror that depended on the audience's emotional involvement for effect.
McCaffrey called Moss's appearance in the show a kind of resurrection following the damage done to her career by the drug allegations, which may have been a deliberate allusion: after McQueen's death, Moss recalled that when he suggested the concept to her, he said he wanted her to be "rising like a phoenix from a fire". Film theorist Su-Anne Yeo argued that the illusion was successful in helping to rehabilitate Moss's image. She wrote that the presentation of the illusion at the V&A particularly "helped to transform Moss from an object of tabloid fodder to one of legitimate critical concern". In a 2014 interview with British photographer Nick Knight, Moss confirmed that she had decided not to attend the show in person, even in disguise; she assumed it would be found out eventually and would "take away from all the magic... the whole thing of me being a ghost".
Sarah Heaton, whose work focuses on the intersection between fashion and literature, described the illusion as evoking the Gothic trope of the barefoot "mad woman"; normally this figure would be confined to an attic or asylum, but McQueen subverts the expectation by displaying her to the public, making her ephemeral and uncontained. Fashion theorists Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt, and Angelene Wong concur, arguing that the presentation demonstrated that Moss's body, as a symbol of female power, was "numinous, untouchable, and evading capture".
Moss's chiffon gown has been critiqued as an unconventional wedding dress. Cultural theorist Monika Seidl was critical of the illusion, arguing that it presented Moss as a contained female "Wiedergänger" or vengeful spirit. She did however find the dress persuasive in the way it "destabilise[s] the notion of a bride". Literary theorist Monica Germanà also took the dress to be a wedding gown, and found it an example of "the morbid coalescence of love and death", a recurring theme for McQueen.
Technical analysis
Other authors have analysed the illusion of Kate Moss as a form of technologically altered reality, sometimes with supernatural associations. Anthropologist Brian Moeran used the illusion as an example of the runway show as a modern magical ritual, writing that the show's "magic is intimately entwined with technological sophistication". In contrast, author Genevieve Valentine described it as a clear science fiction element. Fashion historian Ingrid Loschek wrote that "the catwalk was transformed into a form of virtual reality" through the projection, which energised the audience. Fashion writer Nathalie Khan contrasted the illusion with a straightforward film projection, saying that unlike a film, the illusion made Moss "no longer a mortal subject, but perception made invisible". Jenna Ng described the projection of Moss, a living person, as a kind of rearrangement of physical distance: "the holographic subject appears to be virtually here amongst the present audience even as they are actually elsewhere at the time". She called it an example of the "post-screen", in which there is no barrier between the audience's space and the image. Timothy Campbell cited the illusion of Kate Moss as a literalization, through technology, of the "fundamental spectrality of fashion". He felt that its placement at the end of the show, followed by McQueen's appearance to take his bow, was a way of making an "authorial claim to ownership" over the imagery produced in his shows.
Yeo was critical of the V&A's emphasis on the technological aspect of the illusion, arguing that it incorrectly positioned the effect as modern rather than historical. She argued that it would have been more appropriate to emphasise the connection to older forms of performance like the serpentine dance and phantasmagoria, a theatrical form that uses magic lanterns to project images. Performance theorist Johannes Birringer was critical of the entire Savage Beauty exhibit, but particularly so of the apparent reverence given to the illusion by the audience: "There was a hushed silence in that holographic room which I found pathetic."
Notes
References
Bibliography
Books
Journals
External links
Production stills and concept art from designer Joseph Bennett
British fashion
2000s fashion
2006 in Paris
2006 in art
Alexander McQueen
Optical illusions
Memento mori | Illusion of Kate Moss | [
"Physics"
] | 2,480 | [
"Optical phenomena",
"Physical phenomena",
"Optical illusions"
] |
72,293,009 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Octadecylhydroxylamine | O-Octadecylhydroxylamine (ODHA) is a white solid organic compound with the formula . ODHA is a noncanonical lipid, which contains a saturated alkyl tail and an aminooxy headgroup. This noncanonical lipid can be site selectively appended to the N-terminal of desired biopolymers such as peptides. ODHA drives the supramolecular assembly of modified protein, presumably through the hydrophobic collapse of ODHA chains.
Preparation
ODHA is prepared from the reaction between 2-(octadecyloxy)isoindoline-1,3-dione and hydrazine hydrate.
Reaction
ODHA modification
A pH-responsive oxime bond is used to install an ODHA-type synthetic lipid (octadecylhydroxylamine) in place of the N terminal serine residue in N-myristoylation PTM. N-terminal myristoylation is a post-translational modification carried out by the enzyme N-myristoyltransferase. Generally, the 12-carbon myristoyl lipid is added to the N-terminus of proteins. The lipid is attached to the protein via a stable amide bond. However, the ODHA lipid is attached to the protein via an oxime bond, due to the structure of the non-canonical lipid. The reaction is chemical, compared to the enzymatic NMT reaction. Self-assembly is driven by the hydrophobic nature of the attached lipid, and disassembly is controlled by oxime degradation in an acidic environment. The reaction between the lipid and oxidized protein is biomolecular, which means it is following second order rate kinetics since it is dependent on oxidized protein (ELP) and lipids (ODHA).
References
Lipids
Hydroxylamines | O-Octadecylhydroxylamine | [
"Chemistry"
] | 395 | [
"Biomolecules by chemical classification",
"Hydroxylamines",
"Reducing agents",
"Organic compounds",
"Lipids"
] |
72,293,804 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V1027%20Cygni | V1027 Cygni is a luminous yellow supergiant star located in the constellation of Cygnus, about 14,000 light years away. For a time, it was thought that it could be a low-mass post-AGB star, however recent parallax measurements published in Gaia DR3 have shown this to likely not be the case, and instead it is likely a massive yellow supergiant star.
Properties
V1027 Cygni has a surface temperature about , which has been found in many studies. However, studies before Gaia DR3 generally used a distance around , which led to low luminosity estimates, hence a tentative post-AGB star status. Recent Gaia DR3 data shows that V1027 Cygni is likely much further away, over away, which implies a much higher luminosity (about ) which would place it firmly outside the post-AGB star luminosity range and in that of the more massive, younger yellow supergiants. Spectral indicators of luminosity also suggest a supergiant status.
Assuming a temperature of and a luminosity of about 176,200 L☉ for V1027 Cygni leads to a size of about 560 times that of the Sun.
Variability
When V1027 Cygni was first noticed as a variable star, it was thought to be an irregular variable, dimming and brightening erratically with no discernible period. However, in 2009, a small-amplitude period of 237 days was observed in long-term photometry of the star.
Notes
References
G-type supergiants
Irregular variables
Cygnus (constellation)
333385 | V1027 Cygni | [
"Astronomy"
] | 335 | [
"Cygnus (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
72,294,370 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav%20Lebedinsky | Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Lebedinsky (; 14 September 1888 – 12 December 1956) was a Russian and Soviet chemist who worked on platinum, rhodium and iridium, their extraction and use in catalysis. He also worked on complex compounds of rhodium and iridium. He was also a noted teacher and guided 20 doctoral students in inorganic chemistry.
Lebedinsky was born in Saint Petersburg. He graduated from high school in 1907 and went to St. Petersburg University. Graduating in 1913 with a thesis on anomalous rotatory dispersion he stayed on at the department of inorganic chemistry and studied under Lev Chugaev. He also examined complex metal chemistry and synthesized four forms of ammonium derivatives with trivalent rhodium. He became a professor in 1920 and moved to Moscow in 1935 to work at the Moscow Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold. He developed a method for the extraction of thee metals from copper-nickel sludge, for which he received the Stalin Prize in 1946. He studied platinum catalysis for disinfection of drinking water, and the treatment of waste water. He worked on rhodium extraction and purification and the synthesis of complex compounds of rhenium and ethylene diamine.
References
1888 births
1956 deaths
20th-century Russian chemists
Scientists from Saint Petersburg
Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Inorganic chemists
Soviet chemists
Burials at Vagankovo Cemetery | Vyacheslav Lebedinsky | [
"Chemistry"
] | 309 | [
"Inorganic chemists"
] |
72,294,493 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-dimensional%20quantum%20turbulence | Turbulent phenomena are observed universally in energetic fluid dynamics, associated with highly chaotic fluid motion, and typically involving excitations spreading over a wide range of length scales. The particular features of turbulence are dependent on the fluid and geometry, and specifics of forcing and dissipation.
In classical fluids the fluid vorticity is a continuous field able to acquire any value at each point in the fluid, associated with the fluid supporting any local value of fluid rotation. Quantum fluids are distinguished by vorticity that is quantised, a restriction imposed by the quantum wavefunction that describes the fluid when it reaches a superfluid state; the ability of a fluid to form quantum vortices is the most widely used experimental signature of superfluidity. While quantum fluids can also support classical turbulence, quantum turbulence involves the chaotic dynamics of many interacting quantum vortices. In highly excited bulk superfluid, many vortex lines interact with each other forming quantum turbulent states. When confined to move only in a plane, classical fluids exhibit a reversal in the direction of energy flow during turbulence. Instead of the three-dimensional process involving the formation of smaller rotating eddies, in two-dimensions small eddies tend to combine to make larger rotating structures.
By introducing tight confinement along one direction the Kelvin wave excitations involving bending of otherwise straight vortex lines can be strongly suppressed, favouring vortex alignment with the axis of tight confinement. Vortex dynamics can then enter a regime of effective 2D motion, equivalent to point vortices moving on a plane. In general, 2D quantum turbulence (2DQT) can exhibit complex phenomenology involving coupled vortices and sound in compressible superfluids. The quantum vortex dynamics can exhibit signatures of turbulence including a Kolmogorov −5/3 power law, a quantum manifestation of the inertial transport of energy to large scales observed in classical fluids, known as an inverse energy cascade.
Point vortices
The point vortex model, introduced by Helmholtz and Kirchhoff, describes the motion of ideal point vortices confined to a plane, with direct mapping to planar electrodynamics. The model plays a central role in the study of planar Navier-Stokes flows, and can be realized in compressible superfluids such as those in ultracold gas Bose-Einstein condensates, when the healing length setting the vortex core size is very small compared to the system size.
Negative temperature
Point vortices confined to finite area were predicted by Onsager to exhibit states of negative temperature. This possibility of negative absolute temperature can be traced to the finite phase space of the point vortex system: in contrast to a massive particle moving on a plane, each point vortex only has two degrees of freedom. Specifying the spatial coordinates of the vortex also completely determines the superfluid velocity. At leading order a quantum vortex is massless, with each filament moving with the net background flow and obeying a form of the Biot–Savart law. Guiding-centre plasmas exhibit a symmetry breaking transition at high energy per vortex associated with negative temperature. In Bose-Einstein condensates the annihilation of low-energy vortex dipoles can raise the energy per vortex until the system undergoes spontaneous ordering into macroscopic same-sign vortex clusters associated with negative temperature. Clustered equilibrium states have high energy per vortex, with clusters forming as a consequence of the limited phase space of confined point vortices.
Forced turbulence
Vortices can be injected into a planar superfluid through various forcing mechanisms such as obstacle dragging or elliptical stirring that induce a localized breakdown of superfluidity, or through mechanisms that exploit abrupt phase evolution at the merging of multiple condensates or the condensate phase transition itself.
Small-scale forcing from appropriately dragging an obstacle can inject small vortex clusters into a planar superfluid.
In strongly non-equilibrium quantum fluid dynamics, clustered states can develop as a result of steady inverse energy cascade from small scale forcing, leading to an accumulation of energy at the system scale in the form of macroscopic flow due to vortex charge ordering.
Superfluid experiments
Advances in quantum fluids experiments have provided access to the point vortex regime in compressible superfluids. 2DQT regime has been established in ultracold gases, superfluid helium, and in exciton-polariton condensates comprising quantum fluids of light.
Negative temperature states predicted by Onsager have recently been observed in systems with hard-wall boundary conditions.
References
Turbulence
Superfluidity | Two-dimensional quantum turbulence | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science"
] | 929 | [
"Physical phenomena",
"Phase transitions",
"Turbulence",
"Phases of matter",
"Superfluidity",
"Condensed matter physics",
"Exotic matter",
"Matter",
"Fluid dynamics"
] |
72,300,019 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge%20buying | Revenge buying (also known as revenge shopping or revenge spending) refers to a sudden surge in the purchase of consumer goods after people are denied the opportunity to shop for extended periods of time. The revenge buying mechanism is thought to have evolved as a reaction to the frustration and psychological discomfort caused by restrictions in the freedom of movement and commerce. Unlike panic buying, revenge buying appears to involve the purchase of superfluous goods, such as bags and clothing, as well as decorative objects such as gems and jewellery. The industries revolving around the production of these objects, a major source of revenue for the retail sector, saw huge losses during the lockdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Revenge buying began in China initially, and the trends were seen across the globe when economies reopened. The United States and Europe followed the same kind of enthusiasm in consumers, and luxury brands posted remarkable growth compared to during COVID lockdowns.
Examples
In China, the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s and COVID-19 crisis nearly sixty years later are examples of collective traumas that resulted in revenge buying. The phenomenon was first observed in the 1980s, where it was termed baofuxing xiaofei (). Following China's 1976 opening to international trade, this term describes the sudden demand for foreign-brand goods. It reoccurred in China in April 2020, when the lockdown was mostly lifted and markets reopened. At that time, the French luxury brand Hermès made US$2.7 million in sales in a single day.
COVID-19 pandemic
The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating to many global retail businesses. Many stores and shopping centers were forced to close for months because stay-at-home restrictions meant that consumers could not travel freely. According to a March 2020 article in Business Insider, retail sales dropped 20.5 percent after the pandemic hit China—a percentage not seen since the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
The apparel industry suffered greatly during the pandemic; several notable retailers, including J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Brooks Brothers, Ascena Retail Group, Debenhams, Arcadia Group, GNC, and Lord & Taylor, filed for bankruptcy.
China was the first country hit by the COVID-19 pandemic; by the summer 2020, it had successfully contained community transmission and thereafter lifted significant restrictions. The term revenge buying entered popular consciousness with the immediate economic recovery of the French fashion company Hermès, which recorded $2.7 million in sales at its flagship store in Guangzhou, China, on the day it reopened in April 2020, setting a record for most single-day shopping at any luxury outlet in China. In addition to Hermès, lines piled up outside Apple, Gucci, and Lancôme stores. A similar instance of revenge buying occurred in India following the relaxation of Omicron-related restrictions in March 2022. A similar level of consumer enthusiasm was observed by the press in the United States and Europe after their economies mostly reopened in April 2021.
Explanation
According to sociologists, compulsive and impulsive buying behaviors, such as panic buying and revenge buying, are coping mechanisms that relieve negative feelings.
While revenge buying was first observed in China, it has since been observed in other countries. When physical stores reopened after the initial COVID lockdown, sales increased, particularly in luxury product stores. According to researchers for the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, the purchase of luxury goods acts as a means for consumers to repress unpleasant emotions. Reactance theory is another analytical method sociologists use to gain a deeper understanding of revenge-buying behavior; this theory posits that when a threat or hindrance to a person's behavioral freedom makes them upset, the person will try to regain the threatened autonomy.
See also
Economic bubble
Panic selling
Consumer behaviour
2021 global inflation surge
References
Further reading
Consumer behaviour | Revenge buying | [
"Biology"
] | 795 | [
"Behavior",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Human behavior"
] |
72,300,491 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterogonesis | Heterogonesis describes the segregation of parental genomes into distinct cell lineages in the dividing zygote.
Fertilisation occurs when an ovum fuses with a sperm, forming a zygote. Normally, the genomes of the two parents assort into two diploid bi-parental daughter cells. In a heterogoneic cell division, the genome of only one parent assorts into a single daughter cell following the formation of a tripolar (rather than the normal bipolar) spindle apparatus. Heterogonesis allows for chromosomal segregation to occur in a dispermic fertilisation which may subsequently result in chimerism or sesquizygosis.
The term heterogonesis was coined in 2016 by Destouni and Vermeesch who observed the phenomenon in bovine zygotes. The word is derived from the Greek meaning "different parental origin".
References
Cell anatomy
Chimerism
Developmental biology
Genetics concepts
Mitosis
Reproduction | Heterogonesis | [
"Biology"
] | 207 | [
"Behavior",
"Developmental biology",
"Genetics concepts",
"Reproduction",
"Chimerism",
"Biological interactions",
"Cellular processes",
"Mitosis"
] |
72,301,573 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salah%20Obaya | Salah Sabry A. Obayya is an Egyptian Professor of Photonics and the director of the Center for Photonics and Smart Materials at the Zewail City of Science and Technology. He is a member of African Academy of Sciences, Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers
Education
Prof Salah obtained his B. SC and M. SC in electronics and communications engineering from Mansoura University in 1991 and 1994. He received his doctorate degree in 1999 under the joint supervision of City University London and Mansoura University, Egypt.
Career
In 2012, Prof Salah joined Zewail City of Science and Technology and he is currently a professor and director of the Center for Photonics and Smart Materials. However, prior to his commitment in the institution, he had taught in Brunel University, University of Leeds, and University of South Wales where was made the Founding Director of Photonics and Broadband Communications (PBC) Research Center.
Fellowship and membership
He is a member of Egyptian Society of Optical Science and Applications (ESOSA), the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics, the Higher Education Academy, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and Society, Wales Institute of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Optical Society of America (OSA), International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) and Member of Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES).
Award
In 2017, he won Khalifa Award for Distinguished Arab Professor in Scientific Research. In 2019, he won the First Class Order of Sciences and Arts and the State Appreciation Award in Engineering Sciences. In 2021 he won the African Union Kwame Nakroma Awards for Academic Excellence.
References
Egyptian scientists
Living people
Mansoura University alumni
Alumni of City, University of London
Egyptian electrical engineers
Telecommunications engineers
21st-century Egyptian engineers
Fellows of the IEEE
Fellows of the African Academy of Sciences
Year of birth missing (living people)
People associated with the University of South Wales
Academics of the University of Leeds
Academics of Brunel University London | Salah Obaya | [
"Engineering"
] | 413 | [
"Telecommunications engineering",
"Telecommunications engineers"
] |
72,302,290 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer%20Wen | Jennifer X. Wen is professor in energy resilience at the University of Surrey, England. She was previously professor of engineering at the University of Warwick, England, where she led "Warwick FIRE", a "multidisciplinary research laboratory for both fundamental and applied research in fire, explosions and other safety related reactive and non-reactive flows".
She is vice-chair of the International Association for Fire Safety Science.
Education
Wen has a B.Eng. (1984) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University; a Ph.D. (1990) in heat transfer from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London; a Certificate in Management Studies (1993) from Oxford Brookes University; and a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (1994) from London South Bank University.
She is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and in 2024 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Academics of the University of Surrey
Academics of the University of Warwick
Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumni
Alumni of Queen Mary University of London
Alumni of Oxford Brookes University
Alumni of London South Bank University
21st-century women engineers
Fire protection
Fellows of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
Female fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering | Jennifer Wen | [
"Engineering"
] | 260 | [
"Building engineering",
"Fire protection"
] |
72,302,833 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navin%20Kartik | Navin Kartik is an American economist. He is a professor of economics at Columbia University.
Biography
Kartik received his B.A. from Brandeis University and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 2007 to 2008. He taught at University of California, San Diego from 2004 to 2009 before joining the Columbia faculty. His research has focused on applied game theory and political economy.
Kartik was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 2022. He was also a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2010. In 2023 he became Editor of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics; he also received the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty award at Columbia.
References
Living people
American economists
Econometricians
Columbia University faculty
University of California, San Diego faculty
Sloan Research Fellows
Institute for Advanced Study people
Brandeis University alumni
Stanford University alumni
Game theorists
Political economists
Year of birth missing (living people) | Navin Kartik | [
"Mathematics"
] | 195 | [
"Game theorists",
"Game theory"
] |
72,302,941 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseniaspora%20osmophila | Hanseniaspora osmophila is a species of yeast in the family Saccharomycetaceae. It is found in soil and among the bark, leaves, and fruits of plants, as well as fermented foods and beverages made from fruit.
Taxonomy
Albert Klöcker originally published descriptions of two yeasts in the anamorphic form in 1912; Pseudosaccharomyces corticis, which he isolated on various trees around Copenhagen, and Pseudosaccharomyces santacruzensis, which he obtained from soil in Saint Croix. In 1920, Giuseppe de Rossi isolated a species of yeast from grapes and grape must in Umbria, Italy. He placed it in the same genus, assigning the name Pseudosaccharomyces magnus. Because the Pseudosaccharomyces name had already been used since 1906 for an unrelated organism, in 1923, Alexander Janke proposed an alternative name, Klöckeria, for the genus, which he corrected in 1928 to Kloeckera.
Independently, in 1932, C. J. G. Niehaus described two species of yeasts that possessed spherical ascospores in their holomorphic state. This spherical shape was different from Klöcker's description of the ascospores of the Hanseniaspora genus. Niehaus created a new genus, Kloeckeraspora, which was similar to Hanseniaspora except for the shape of the ascospores. He called one of the new species Kloeckeraspora osmophila, and the other was Kloeckeraspora uvarum. The creation of the new genus was controversial among researchers who disagreed that the number and shape of ascospores was enough of a defining characteristic for a new genus, and in 1948, Emil M. Mrak and Herman Phaff proposed that a slight modification of the Hanseniaspora genus would allow the combination of the two genera. In their study of samples of the species, Jacomina Lodder and N.J.W. Kreger-Van Rij could not find any ascospores in Kloeckeraspora osmophila, so they provisionally reclassified it as Kloeckera magna in 1952, but Shehata, et. al were able to produce abundantly sporulating strains in their laboratory, and preferred to include the yeast in the Hanseniaspora genus, reclassifying both of the species identified by Niehaus as synonyms of H. uvarum in 1955. The next year, H.J. Phaff, M.W. Miller, and M. Shifrine determined that the strains were different species, since K. osmophila had the ability to assimilate maltose, but H. uvarum could not, and therefore proposed that the strains originally defined as Kloeckeraspora osmophila be named Hanseniaspora osmophila.
In 1958, Miller and Phaff studied yeast species of the Hanseniaspora and Kloeckera genera and concluded that Kloeckera magna and Kloeckera corticis were the same species, with K. corticis taking name priority, and determined that it was the anamorphic form of Hanseniaspora osmophila. DNA Testing by S.A. Meyer in 1978 conclusively synonymized the anamorphic yeasts in the Kloeckera genus with their teleomorphic counterparts in the Hanseniaspora genus, and recategorized Kloeckera corticis as a synonym of Hanseniaspora osmophila. The testing also determined that Kloeckera santacruzensis was the same species as Hanseniaspora osmophila.
Description
Microscopic examination of the yeast cells in YM liquid medium after 48 hours at 25°C reveals cells that are 3.5 to 6 μm by 7.2 to 18.2 μm in size, apiculate, ovoid or long-ovoid, appearing singly or in pairs. Reproduction is by budding, which occurs at both poles of the cell. In broth culture, sediment is present, and after one month a thin ring is formed.
Colonies that are grown on malt agar for one month at 25°C appear white to cream-colored, glossy, and smooth. Growth is flat on the edges and raised at the center. The yeast forms branched pseudohyphae on potato agar. The yeast has been observed to form one or two sherical and warty ascospores when grown for at least one week on 5% Difco malt extract agar, and the ascospores are not released from the ascus.
The yeast can ferment glucose, but not sucrose, galactose, maltose, lactose, raffinose or trehalose. The yeast can assimilate glucose, cellobiose, and salicin. Assimilation of sucrose and maltose is variable. It has a positive growth rate at 30°C, but no growth at 34°C. It can not grow on agar media containing 0.1% cycloheximide and can not utilize 2-keto-d-gluconate as a sole source of carbon.
Ecology
The species has been identified from locations worldwide, mainly on the bark, flowers, or fruit of plants, or in soil. It has also been found in fermented foods and beverages made from fruit, including wine and vinegar.
Apart from unwanted spoilage, this yeast is also present in the fermentation of traditional Italian balsamic vinegar (Zygosaccharomyces rouxii together with Zygosaccharomyces bailii, Z. pseudorouxii, Z. mellis, Z. bisporus, Z. lentus, Hanseniaspora valbyensis, Hanseniaspora osmophila, Candida lactis-condensi, Candida stellata, Saccharomycodes ludwigii, Saccharomyces cerevisiae)
Effects on wine production
A study of the fermentation characteristics of H. osmophila in wine must found that it shares many of the characteristics of Saccharomyces ludwigii, a spoilage yeast that has been referred to as the "winemaker's nightmare" due to its ability to outcompete targeted fermentation yeasts. In the study, H. osmophila preferentially fermented glucose, followed by fructose, and was able to tolerate an alcohol level of up to 11.2% at 15°C. Due to the production of acetic acid, acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate, and acetoin to concentrations above the taste threshold and the lack of inhibition of growth and fermentation rate with the use of sulfur dioxide, the study concluded that the presence of H. osmophila should be considered detrimental to wine production.
References
Saccharomycetes
Yeasts
Fungi described in 1932
Cosmopolitan species
Fungus species | Hanseniaspora osmophila | [
"Biology"
] | 1,460 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species",
"Yeasts",
"Cosmopolitan species",
"Organisms by location"
] |
72,303,570 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luz%20de%20Teresa | María de la Luz (Lucero) Jimena de Teresa de Oteyza (born 1965) is a Mexican and Spanish mathematician specializing in the control theory of parabolic partial differential equations. She is a researcher in the Institute of Mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a former president of the Mexican Mathematical Society.
Education and career
De Teresa was born in Mexico City on 14 June 1965; and is a citizen of both Mexico and Spain. Her father was a physicist who encouraged her to do what made her happiest; she decided that not having integrals in her life would be a horrible absence.
She became an undergraduate at UNAM, graduating in 1990. Next, she studied applied mathematics at the Complutense University of Madrid, completing her PhD in 1995. Her dissertation, Control de algunas ecuaciones de la Física-Matemática: Ecuación de ondas, del calor y sistema de la termoelasticidad, was supervised by Enrique Zuazua.
She has been a researcher in the Institute of Mathematics at UNAM since 1995, and was president of the Mexican Mathematical Society for the 2018–2020 term. In 2020 she was named to the governing board of UNAM's university council.
Recognition
De Teresa was elected to the Mexican Academy of Sciences in 2011. She was named an honorary member of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society in 2018.
UNAM gave her their Reconocimiento Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz award in 2009.
References
External links
Home page
1965 births
Living people
Mexican mathematicians
Mexican women mathematicians
Spanish mathematicians
Spanish women mathematicians
Control theorists
National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni
Complutense University of Madrid alumni
Members of the Mexican Academy of Sciences | Luz de Teresa | [
"Engineering"
] | 354 | [
"Control engineering",
"Control theorists"
] |
72,304,002 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C19H33NO2 | The molecular formula (molar mass: 307.48 g/mol, exact mass: 307.2511 u) may refer to:
Dysidazirine
Fingolimod | C19H33NO2 | [
"Chemistry"
] | 40 | [
"Isomerism",
"Set index articles on molecular formulas"
] |
72,304,119 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpirational%20cooling%20%28biological%29 | Transpirational cooling is the cooling provided as plants transpire water. Excess heat generated from solar radiation is damaging to plant cells and thermal injury occurs during drought or when there is rapid transpiration which produces wilting. Green vegetation contributes to moderating climate by being cooler than adjacent bare earth or constructed areas. As plant leaves transpire they use energy to evaporate water aggregating up to a huge volume globally every day.
An individual tree can transpire hundreds of liters of water per day. For every 100 liters of water transpired, the tree then cools by 70 kWh. Urban heat island effects can be attributed to the replacement of vegetation by constructed surfaces. Deforested areas reveal a higher temperature than adjacent intact forest. Forests and other natural ecosystems support climate stabilisation.
The Earth’s energy budget reveals pathways to mitigate climate change using our knowledge of the efficacy of how plants cool.
Transpiration and cooling
Evapotranspiration is the combined processes moving water from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. Transpiration is the movement of water through a plant and out of its leaves and other aerial parts into the atmosphere. This movement is driven by solar energy. In the tallest trees, such as Sequoia sempervirens, the water rises well over 100 metres from root-tip to canopy leaves. Such trees also exploit evaporation to keep the surface cool. Water vapour from evapotranspiration mixed with air moves upwards to the point of saturation and then, helped by the emissions of cloud condensation nuclei, forms clouds. Each gram molecule (mole) of condensing water will bring about a marked 1200-fold plus reduction in volume.The simultaneous release of latent heat will drive air from below to fill the partial vacuum. The energy required for the surrounding air to move in is readily calculated from the small (one-fifteenth of latent heat) reduction in temperature.
A small amount of that water transpired is used for growth and metabolism. Photosynthesis takes place in the cells of plants and other organisms such as algae, that contain chlorophyll. This process uses the radiant energy from the sun to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen that when combined with the carbon sourced from carbon dioxide, produces sugars. Photosynthesis is therefore the basis of almost all food production and produces oxygen as a byproduct.
Leaves have many functions. In addition to receiving water from the roots and creating the raw materials for photosynthesis, they also have a large internal surface area to enable the exchange of gases. Their stomata control the flow of water vapour out of the leaf and air into the leaf. In many plants, this is achieved in a structure thin enough to be semi-translucent, to enable some light to pass through to neighbouring leaves. The water that becomes raw material for sugar production, also cools the leaf and supports its structure through the pressure of turgidity. In 2022, attempts to mass-produce artificial leaves to replicate this process and create hydrogen were still in the development stage. All organic matter, living and dead, originated as sugars. Part of the process of creating those sugars was splitting the water molecule into its component parts. Vegetation has a huge influence on climate, enacted through photosynthesis and transpiration.Botanists have calculated that there are about 600 square inches [3,871 cm2] of surface inside a leaf for every cubic inch [16.38 cm3] of its bulk and that a large elm tree has in all some 15 million leaves within an area, if spread out whole, of nearly 10 acres [4.05 ha] or, if unfolded into the sum total of air-breathing light-absorbing surfaces of all the internal chloroplasts something like 25 square miles [64.75 square kilometres].Plants cool when they transpire. Evaporating water and transmitting it through leaf stomata requires a lot of energy. Fred Pearce states that “a single tree transpiring a hundred litres of water a day has a cooling power equivalent to two household air-conditioning units” (p. 29). An individual tree can transpire hundreds of litres of water per day. Transpiring 100 litres is equivalent to a cooling power of 70 kWh. Jan Pokorny posits that a tree with a crown of 5 metres diameter covers an area of about 20m2. Of the 150 kWh falling on the crown, 1% is used for photosynthesis, 10% reflected as light energy, 5 to 10% as sensible heat with the remaining 79 to 84% entering the process of transpiration. If a larger tree has a sufficient water supply, it can evaporate more than 100 L of water a day. In order to evaporate 100 L of water, approximately 70 kWh (250 MJ) of solar energy is needed. This energy is hidden in water vapor as latent heat and is released again during the process of condensation to liquid water.Extrapolated to a hectare, the cooling power of a closed canopy is 35,000 kWh a day.
Cities with constructed surfaces and devegetation are typically warmer than adjacent countryside. This phenomenon is known as urban heat islands. For example Tokyo’s average September temperature has increased by almost 2 °C. over 100 years. This differential would increase in the summer months. Significant increases for cities in the tropics such as Dhaka are projected, accelerated by urban growth and intensification. The city of Melbourne “plans to plant 3000 trees in Melbourne every year to increase the resilience of the urban forest and to cool our city by 4°C.” Increasing tree cover and evapotranspiration provides a localised mitigation solution.
On a larger scale, The Mau Forest complex in Western Kenya was deforested from 5,200 km2 in 1986 to 3,400 km2 in 2009. Satellite images revealed temperature increases with deforested areas being 20 °C hotter or more.
There were about six trillion trees on the planet, but human activity has destroyed roughly half. Increasing terrestrial biomass will cool the planet. Of the latent heat that escapes at recondensation at cloud level half departs the atmosphere into space, as the photons escape in a part of the spectrum that does not get reabsorbed by greenhouse gases.
Using satellite imagery, the impact of regeneration processes restoring vegetation in arid areas is visible from space and can tracked over time. Vegetation restoration is clearly visible in images of the Penbamoto project in Tanzania.Seeing African Restoration from Space: Planet and Justdiggit... The data associated with these images reveal a temperature reduction in the topsoil up to 0.75 °C. This temperature reduction was achieved in four years. We can anticipate a larger reduction as the vegetation cover increases.
The movement of water vapour and thermal energy in the atmosphere
The movement of heat embodied in water vapour as it leaves vegetation is not well understood given the complexity of the dynamics. While the movement of water into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and consequent cooling is broadly accepted, the movement of water further into the atmosphere is more contentious. There are observable phenomena that provide some clues; mornings following cloudless skies will be cooler than cloudy nights, and deserts get very hot during the day and cool rapidly at night. Heat transfer physics are complex, and involve energy carriers including photons. When energy is freed upon condensation, photons are emitted, transferring energy both upward and downward in the atmosphere. Oceans add further complexity of atmospheric dynamics.
A 2022 World Resources Institute report says that albedo, surface roughness, and aerosols, along with evapotranspiration, generate clouds that increase the albedo cooling effect. They calculate that reduced emissions from tropical forest loss could achieve 2.8 gigatonnes of CO2 per year, and an additional 1.4 gigatonnes of CO2 per year of additional cooling through these albedo effects.
Using thermal imaging to illustrate transpirational cooling
Thermal imaging captures the infrared radiation emitted from an object. Michal Kravčík, Jan Pokorný and co-authors used thermographs to demonstrate the temperature differential between vegetation and constructed surfaces in their 2007 Water for the recovery of the climate - a new water paradigm.
The images to the right were taken with a thermal lens mounted on a mobile phone alongside visual images for reference points. A 20 °C. plus temperature differential between vegetation and was often recorded. The three images here pair thermal images and visual images. They reveal significant temperature differences between vegetated and bare surfaces. The image of the Coronation Reserve shows an areas of turf and the margin of native forest separated by a herbicide strip. The bottom image is a thermal image with a slightly different perspective, mainly caused by different camera lenses. The key information distilled from these images is the temperature differences. The grass and the forest margin have similar heat signatures. Temperatures range from 29 to 37 °C. while the dividing herbicide strip reaches 53 °C. Note also the vehicle tracks in the top image with roughly proximate higher temperature readings in the bottom image with an 8 °C. differential. Over time vehicles compact soil structure leading to reduced plant growth, especially when vehicles drive on wet soils. This image reveals that turf can be as cooling as forest.
A second side-by-side comparison of thermal and visual images are of a traffic meridian. The ground cover plants are Coprosma repens 'Poor Knights'. The mulch, at its hottest, is 61 °C. The coprosma are as cool as 32 °C. - a 29 °C temperature difference.
Significance for climate mitigation
Non-vegetated or constructed surfaces absorb incoming solar radiation striking that energy and re-radiating it as infrared heat with long waveforms. This is sensible heat in that it can be sensed. Temperature is changed without a change of state. By contrast latent heat (hidden heat) results from a change of state without a change of temperature. For example as radiant energy warms a body of water it raises the temperature generating sensible heat. Water evaporated from the body of water changes state as latent heat. To change one gram of liquid water to vapour requires 540 calories of heat, and if that water vapour condenses back to liquid water 540 calories are released. One climate mitigation pathway is for water vapour to carry energy back into the atmosphere where some of that energy will dissipate into space.
Earth’s energy budget reveals the pathways of solar energy to earth, its cycling in earth systems and atmosphere, and release back into space. There is an average of 340.4 watts/m2 of incoming energy. To maintain a stable climate the same amount of energy must return to space. While increased levels of greenhouse gasses retain more heat, there are other pathways that can influence this energy balance. Understanding these dynamics provides more pathways to moderate the climate than simply relying on emissions reductions and sequestration alone. Referencing the NASA earth’s energy budget, an example is reducing the 398.2 watts/m2 emitted by the surface, by extending terrestrial and marine vegetative cover as a percentage of land cover and by extending the length of seasonal growth. This is achieved through a whole system approach including regenerating the soil carbon sponge, protection of existing forests, reafforestation, and restoring the biotic pump. The heat emitted from the planet (398.2 watts/m2) is greater than incoming solar energy (340.4 watts/m2).
Indigenous stewardship for climate moderation
Increasing vegetative cover will be enhanced by protecting indigenous rights. Deforestation is an expression of the extractive industries of colonisation. Recent scholarship has identified that indigenous communities in Australia and North America maintained landscapes to reduce the incidence of uncontrolled forest fire and maintain biodiversity. A study of 12,000 years of population data found that “three quarters of terrestrial nature has long been shaped by diverse histories of human habitation and use by Indigenous and traditional peoples”. With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies.This calls on us to unlearn some of the assumptions embedded in Western epistemologies and the decolonisation of knowledge as a foundation for more effective climate action.
See also
Effects of climate change on the water cycle
Water cycle
References
External links
Working with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate Earth’s landscapes. Stefan Schwarzer, UNEP
Plants | Transpirational cooling (biological) | [
"Biology"
] | 2,601 | [
"Plants"
] |
72,305,821 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%205500 | NGC 5500 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Boötes, registered in New General Catalogue (NGC).
Observation history
NGC 5500 was discovered by William Herschel on 12 May 1787. John Louis Emil Dreyer in the New General Catalogue, described the galaxy as "considerably faint, considerably small, irregularly round".
Notes
References
Galaxies discovered in 1787
5500
Astronomical objects discovered in 1787
Elliptical galaxies
NGC 5500
Discoveries by William Herschel | NGC 5500 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 91 | [
"Boötes",
"Constellations"
] |
72,306,068 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidby | vidby AG (stylized in lower-case) is a start-up based in Rotkreuz, Switzerland specializing in AI language translation for videos. Founded by Alexander Konovalov (:uk:Олександр Коновалов) and Eugen von Rubinberg in September 2021, the company has especially garnered attention for its use in translating speeches given by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.
History
vidby AG was founded by Alexander Konovalov and Eugen von Rubinberg. Konovalov is a native of Ukraine and retains Ukrainian citizenship; Rubinberg came to Switzerland from Germany and holds German citizenship. Both are residents of Switzerland. The latter founded his first business, a trading company, at age 16.
In 2013, the business partners launched a consumer-oriented video-call translation service called DROTR (Droid Translator) AG, utilizing a Konovalov-created AI-powered language translation technology enabling simultaneous translation of messages, voice and video calls in 104 languages (written), with 44 available in spoken form. This was the world's first video calling app with translation. The technology was pronounced a competitor of Skype and Viber by Forbes and claimed first prize at the "Innovative Breakthrough 2013" Competition.
In 2021, with a new business-oriented focus, DROTR became vidby, with the former Google technology partners Konovalov and Rubinberg remaining at the helm, each with the title Co-CEO. While headquartered in Switzerland, vidby's development team is, according to the company's founders, based in Ukraine. The technology behind vidby has an accuracy level variously reported as up to 99 percent or 99 to 100 percent, equalling the highest level of human translation. Additionally, the technology is capable of removing the original language while maintaining ambient sounds. Currently, some 70 languages plus 60 dialects are possible with the algorithm-based technology.
In 2024, Alexander Konovalov initiated the idea of preserving linguistic diversity in the world using AI technologies.
Notable use
In addition to its use with speeches delivered by Pope Francis, the technology has been provided to Ukrainian authorities and embassies during the ongoing military conflict with Russia free of remuneration. By July, 2022, some 70 speeches given by President Zelenskyy totalling 650 minutes had been translated into 30 languages, for a total of over 10,000 minutes of video material. Of its use in translating Zelenskyy's wartime speeches, Konovalov has said, "Like any citizen, I want to help defend my country."
Notable corporate clients of vidby include Samsung, Siemens, Cisco, Kärcher, Generali and McDonald's Corporation; an academic client is Harvard University.
Google Cloud Technology Partner status of vidby was confirmed officially after a 6-month audit in December 2022.
Denys Krasnikov, vidby Co-founder is responsible for cooperation with Google, YouTube, Microsoft, and other key partners. After the launch of multilingual YouTube channels, vidby started AI translating and dubbing creators' videos for this new type of channel at the end of February 2023.
Accolades
vidby headed a list of the five best video translation services as named by TechRadar Deutschland in September, 2022. In the same month, Tech Times named vidby #1 in their list of the five best such services. It similarly topped a list of the five best content translation technologies as judged by European Business Review in October, 2022. Prior to these lead-position rankings (August, 2022), it was featured as Business Insiders special start-up recommendation (German: "Unser Lesetipp auf Gründerszene").
In 2023, YouTube recognized vidby as its recommended vendor.
See also
Machine translation
Speech recognition
External links
Development of Supervised Speaker Diarization System Based on the PyAnnote Audio Processing Library
References
Companies based in the canton of Zug
Software companies of Switzerland
Applications of artificial intelligence
Language software
Translation software | Vidby | [
"Technology"
] | 834 | [
"Language software",
"Natural language and computing"
] |
72,307,852 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%E2%80%93Pollak%20conjecture | In mathematics, the Gilbert–Pollak conjecture is an unproven conjecture on the ratio of lengths of Steiner trees and Euclidean minimum spanning trees for the same point sets in the Euclidean plane. It was proposed by Edgar Gilbert and Henry O. Pollak in 1968.
Statement
For a set of points in the plane, the shortest network of line segments that connects the points, having only the given points as endpoints, is the Euclidean minimum spanning tree of the set. It may be possible to construct a shorter network by using additional endpoints, not present in the given point set. These additional points are called Steiner points and the shortest network that can be constructed using them is called a Steiner minimum tree. The Steiner ratio is the supremum, over all point sets, of the ratio of lengths of the Euclidean minimum spanning tree to the Steiner minimum tree. Because the Steiner minimum tree is shorter, this ratio is always greater than one.
A lower bound on the Steiner ratio is provided by three points at the vertices of an equilateral triangle of unit side length. For these three points, the Euclidean minimum spanning tree uses two edges of the triangle, with total length two. The Steiner minimum tree connects all three points to a Steiner point at the centroid of the triangle, with the smaller total length . Because of this example, the Steiner ratio must be at least .
The Gilbert–Pollak conjecture states that this example is the worst case for the Steiner ratio, and that this ratio equals . That is, for every finite point set in the Euclidean plane, the Euclidean minimum spanning tree can be no longer than times the length of the Steiner minimum tree.
Attempted proof
The conjecture is famous for its proof by Ding-Zhu Du and Frank Kwang-Ming Hwang, which later turned out to have a serious gap.
Based on the flawed Du and Hwang result, J. Hyam Rubinstein and Jia F. Weng concluded that the Steiner ratio is also for a 2-dimensional sphere of constant curvature, but due to the gap in the base result of Du and Hwang, the result of Rubinstein and Weng is now also considered as not proved yet.
References
Conjectures
Unsolved problems in graph theory
Unsolved problems in computer science
Geometric algorithms
Combinatorial optimization
Metric geometry | Gilbert–Pollak conjecture | [
"Mathematics"
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"Unsolved problems in mathematics",
"Unsolved problems in computer science",
"Conjectures",
"Unsolved problems in graph theory",
"Mathematical problems"
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66,391,593 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch%20childcare%20benefits%20scandal | The Dutch childcare benefits scandal ( or , ) refers to a political scandal in the Netherlands involving false allegations of welfare fraud by the Tax and Customs Administration () against thousands of families claiming childcare benefits.
Between 2005 and 2019, approximately 26,000 parents were wrongly accused of making fraudulent benefit claims, resulting in demands to repay their received allowances in full. In many cases, this sum amounted to tens of thousands of euros, driving families into severe financial hardship.
The scandal gained public attention in September 2018, prompting investigations that criticized the Tax and Customs Administration's procedures as discriminatory, particularly affecting parents with foreign backgrounds and characterized by institutional biases. The severity of the issue culminated in the resignation of the third Rutte cabinet on 15 January 2021, just two months before the scheduled 2021 general election. A parliamentary inquiry into the affair concluded that it violated fundamental principles of the rule of law.
Background
Childcare benefits in the Netherlands
Childcare in the Netherlands is not free and parents are generally required to pay for the costs by themselves. However, part of the costs may be covered by childcare benefit, which is available to families in which all parents are either employed or enrolled in secondary or tertiary education or a civic integration course. The amount of childcare benefit is calculated as a percentage of the hourly rate of the childcare centre or childminding agency, ranging from 33.3 to 96.0% depending on the parents' collective income and the number of children.
Each year, the government sets a maximum hourly rate for which families may receive childcare benefit. Any amount exceeding the maximum hourly rate must be fully paid by the parents. The number of childcare hours for which a family is entitled to childcare benefit depends on the number of hours that each parent works. The maximum is 230 hours per month per child. Parents may opt to receive their childcare benefit on their own bank account or to have it transferred directly to the childcare centre or childminding agency.
Childcare benefits were introduced to the Dutch social welfare system in 2004, when the States General of the Netherlands adopted the Childcare Act (). Formally, the programme is run by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, but the Tax and Customs Administration (part of the Ministry of Finance) is responsible for its implementation, including payment and fraud prevention.
In 2005, the General Act on Means-tested Benefits () was introduced, which reorganised the existing welfare system. This law did not include a hardship clause, which would allow for exceptions to be made should the prescribed procedures be deemed unreasonable.
Emergence of fraudulent childminding agencies
In the years following the introduction of the Childcare Act, childminding agencies emerged that committed fraud by applying for childcare benefit on behalf of their clients without asking for the mandatory contribution of 4.0 to 66.7% depending on their income. A notable example is the case of the childminding agency De Appelbloesem in Beilen, which provided informal babysitters (e.g. grandparents babysitting their grandchildren) with a formal employment contract, so that they could apply for childcare benefit and split the money between them.
Since family members often babysit for free and parents would find it undesirable to switch to an arrangement that requires them to pay for their babysitter's services, the agency did not inform its clients of the fact that they were legally required to pay for the remainder of the "costs", i.e. the part of the agency's (imaginary) hourly rate not covered by the childcare benefit it had received.
In 2009, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) raided the agency, and its director was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for forgery and fraud. According to the Tax and Customs Administration, the parents involved had to pay back the childcare benefits the agency had received in their name, as well as payments they had received after leaving De Appelbloesem.
In November 2010, the House of Representatives passed a motion to recover the funds given to fraudulent childminding agencies rather than indebting parents who acted in good faith. Minister of Social Affairs Henk Kamp wrote to the House that this was not legally possible and that parents who find themselves in this situation should take legal action against their childminding agency. The clients of De Appelbloesem appealed the decision of the Tax and Customs Administration, but after several lawsuits, the Council of State confirmed that the law required them to pay back the childcare benefits they had received.
Bulgarian migrant fraud
In 2013, RTL Nieuws revealed that a number of Bulgarian migrants had been taking advantage of the Dutch social welfare system. They were encouraged by a gang to briefly register at an address in the Netherlands and retroactively apply for a €6,000–8,000 health care and housing allowance. At the time, the tax authorities paid allowances immediately and checked eligibility afterwards, at which point the Bulgarians had already left the country.
Between 2007 and 2013, over 800 Bulgarians unjustly received about four million euros in total using this method. According to State Secretary for Finance Frans Weekers, many of these cases were not deliberate fraud but rather negligence on the Bulgarians' part. Ultimately, Weekers survived a motion of no confidence, in which he only retained support from the coalition parties (VVD and PvdA) and two minor opposition parties (CU and SGP).
Response to migrant fraud
In response to the widespread Bulgarian migrant fraud, the House of Representatives insisted on stricter fraud prevention. The coalition agreement of the first Rutte cabinet also included a provision to intensify anti-fraud enforcement. As a consequence, the government established a Fraud Management Team on 28 May 2013, consisting of top officials from the Tax and Customs Administration and the Ministry of Finance.
Later that year, the Fraud Management Team established the Collaborative Anti-facilitation Force (, CAF). Here, "facilitation" refers to individuals or institutions that enable or encourage people to commit fraud. In the context of childcare benefit fraud, this meant that the CAF actively looked for childcare centres and childminding agencies that submitted suspicious childcare benefit applications.
In June 2013, Prime Minister Mark Rutte also established the ministerial committee "Tackling Fraud", which would exist until 2015. This committee developed a broader strategy for the national government's anti-fraud campaign but did not specifically consider the Tax and Customs Administration's approach to welfare fraud. In late 2013, the committee prepared a letter to the House of Representatives, which initially set out a strict approach, but ultimately emphasised the need to act proportionately and to trust rather than to mistrust.
Cases
CAF 11 Hawaii
The first case that revealed to the public the severity of the anti-fraud policies was the CAF's eleventh case, nicknamed "CAF 11 Hawaii". In this case, the CAF investigated childminding agency Dadim in Eindhoven, after the local government had received signals in 2011 suggesting that Dadim was facilitating childcare benefit fraud. In 2012, a judge ruled that no fraud had been found, but in October 2013 the Tax and Customs Administration still designated the office as a site of suspected fraud. In November 2013, visits were made to sixteen affiliated childminders, but the authorities continued to find no evidence of fraud. Nevertheless, in April 2014, 317 clients of Dadim, almost all of whom had dual citizenship, were classified as fraudsters.
Other cases
It was later found that the CAF had investigated 630 other agencies, possibly with the same harshness as in the CAF 11 Hawaii case. It is estimated that about 2,200 families were victimised in this way. Only 200 of those labelled as fraudsters were subsequently recommended to the Public Prosecution Service for using forged documents. The subsequent prosecutions resulted in only 15 convictions and eight settlements.
In many of these cases, the CAF employed collective punishment based on the "80–20 principle" (80% fraud, 20% innocent; an inversion of the usual principle). Quantitative evidence for this presumption was lacking from the Tax and Customs Administration, and it turned out to be virtually impossible for innocent parents to reverse decisions.
Another group of approximately 8,000 parents fell afoul of strict administrative policies, in which a small mistake (e.g. a missing signature or an undeclared change in income) could lead to a full clawback of the childcare benefit. This was stated in the law and was initially confirmed by a decision of the Council of State. In 2019, the Council of State reversed this decision, and decided to return the recovered amount to the parents, along with compensation on a case-by-case basis.
Qualification "Deliberate intent/Gross negligence"
When the Tax and Customs Administration suspected seriously culpable acts, the Dutch bureaucracy would mark the involved parents with the label "Deliberate intent/Gross negligence" (). Individuals who had received this label were no longer eligible for standard debt collection arrangements. Under the standard arrangement, debtors repay their debt as much as possible over a two-year period (without falling below subsistence level) and any debt remaining after that period would then be considered irrecoverable. Because parents were not eligible for such a payment plan, they became heavily indebted.
In November 2020, State Secretary for Finance Alexandra van Huffelen released an internal memorandum from 2016, in which it is recommended that anyone with a childcare benefit debt exceeding €3,000 should automatically receive the "Deliberate intent/Gross negligence" qualification. According to Van Huffelen, it was unclear whether this recommendation had been carried out.
Whereas the scandal mainly involved false allegations of childcare benefit fraud, it later turned out that the authorities also wrongly suspected residents of making fraudulent claims to healthcare benefit, rent benefit and supplementary child benefit. In the case of income tax, it was revealed that the Tax and Customs Administration – under the code name Project 1043 – claimed that citizens were fraudulent based on suspicions.
Investigations
As early as 9 August 2017, the National Ombudsman published a report entitled "No power play, but fair play" about the 232 parents of the CAF 11 Hawaii case. In the report, the Ombudsman strongly criticised the Tax and Customs Administration's harsh approach and recommended that these parents should be compensated. The childcare benefits scandal came to public attention when RTL Nieuws and Trouw reported about the case in September 2018. The Socialist Party opened a hotline for victims and developed a "black book" (a list of grievances) based on the 280 complaints received. This indictment was delivered to State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel on 28 August 2019.
The Central Government Audit Service (ADR) also investigated the childcare benefits scandal in 2019. Specifically, the investigation aimed to find out whether the mistakes in the CAF 11 Hawaii case had also been made in other CAF cases. The investigation was controversial, as senior civil servants of the Tax and Customs Administration had stated that the three key actors involved with the CAF would not be prosecuted.
Whereas the Council of State had previously agreed with the Tax and Customs Administration on their strict approach to fraud, the Council of State reversed its position in October 2019. In contrast to previous rulings, the Council of State expressed the opinion that the Tax and Customs Administration did in fact have the power to assess proportionality on a case-by-case basis.
Internal reports
In 2019, State Advocate had issued a draft recommendation, which hinted that the law allowed for a less harsh approach for parents who had not paid a personal contribution on the advice of their childminder agency. Houtzagers called a tough approach (full repayment) "justifiable", but urged caution for individual circumstances. It is unclear why this advice was not followed. The exact contents of the advisory report remain classified, due to a general policy not to disclose the advice of the State Advocate. However, its contents were openly discussed in the House of Representatives in December 2020.
In November 2019, a former employee of the Tax and Customs Administration sent an urgent letter to the House of Representatives. The employee processed objections submitted to the Benefits department between 2014 and 2016. In the letter, he stated that parents were treated unfairly and that the activities did not have a sound legal basis. He also wrote that he reported this to his supervisor on several occasions, but that nothing was done about it.
In October 2020, it became public that in-house counsel Sandra Palmen had also reported unlawful acts at the Benefits department in 2017. Based on a decision by the Council of State, she said that the Tax and Customs Administration acted reprehensibly. This report did not lead to a change in policy either.
Advisory Committee for the Implementation of Benefits
On 1 July 2019, State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel established the Advisory Committee for the Implementation of Benefits (Dutch: Adviescommissie uitvoering toeslagen). The committee was chaired by former minister and former vice-chairman of the Council of State Piet Hein Donner, and was therefore nicknamed the "Donner Committee" (). The committee also included former State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment Jetta Klijnsma and jurist . The task of this committee was to advise on how to improve the benefits system. The committee also had the specific task of assessing the scope for handling the childcare benefits scandal cases.
On 12 March 2020, the committee presented its final report, "Looking Back in Astonishment" (). In the report, the committee recommended extending the compensation scheme for about 300 victims to other parents who were "treated with an institutional bias".
The findings of this report were, however, criticised. For example, the committee was accused of not being critical enough of the role of the Council of State, of which Donner himself was vice-chairman at the time. The committee was also accused of keeping politicians out of harm's way, especially former Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Lodewijk Asscher. Dutch news site argued that the committee's main conclusions did not correspond to the findings of their inquiry.
Dutch Data Protection Authority
After reports from RTL Nieuws and Trouw on the use of racial profiling in the assessment of benefit applications, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) decided to start an investigation into the Tax and Customs Administration in May 2019. In July 2020, the chairman of the AP presented the report to State Secretary Van Huffelen. The AP described the Tax and Customs Administration's working method as "unlawful, discriminatory and improper" and stated that it had seriously violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Chairman wrote:
Although the AP considered the practices as discriminatory, it concluded there was no ethnic profiling. The AP also described in the report that the Tax and Customs Administration had not cooperated in the investigation. Based on this report, the AP is considering a sanction for the Tax and Customs Administration.
Parliamentary Interrogation Committee on Childcare Benefits
On the initiative of member Bart Snels of GroenLinks, the House of Representatives established the Parliamentary Interrogation Committee on Childcare Benefits (, POK) on 2 July 2020. The aim was to find out to what extent the cabinet was aware of the childcare benefits scandal and why it took until 2019 to become public. A minority of the House of Representatives also wanted former members of the House of Representatives to be able to be heard during the interrogations. The decision not to allow this was criticised, because as co-legislator and controller of the government, the House of Representatives also had a role in the childcare benefits scandal.
Because statements during a parliamentary questioning are no longer legally usable for criminal investigation and a criminal investigation by the Public Prosecution Service was still ongoing, the questioning was coordinated with the Public Prosecution Service. Civil servants were not asked about racial profiling by the tax authorities, so that they may still be prosecuted for those acts in the future.
The parliamentary interrogation committee consisted of the following members of the House of Representatives:
Interrogations
The investigation took place in November 2020. In the first week, twelve experts and former top officials from the Tax and Customs Administration, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment testified. On 18 November, the former directors of the Tax and Customs Administration were questioned by the committee. They blamed the childcare benefits scandal on the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. A day later, the officials of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, in turn, referred back to the Tax and Customs Administration. During the interrogation of Sandra Palmen, Renske Leijten asked her to read part of her memorandum, so that redacted passages became public. This revealed that she already advised in 2017 not to continue litigating against parents.
In the second week, seven (former) members of government were interrogated:
Frans Weekers (State Secretary for Finance, 2010–2014)
Eric Wiebes (State Secretary for Finance, 2014–2017)
Menno Snel (State Secretary for Finance, 2017–2019)
Wopke Hoekstra (Minister of Finance, 2017–2022)
Lodewijk Asscher (Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, 2012–2017)
Tamara van Ark (State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment, 2017–2020)
Mark Rutte (Prime Minister, 2010–2024)
Report
On 17 December 2020, the committee presented a report entitled "Unprecedented Injustice" () to Speaker of the House of Representatives Khadija Arib. The report criticised the Tax and Customs Administration, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the cabinet, the Council of State, and also the House of Representatives itself. The committee wrote that the affected parents did not receive the protection they deserved as a consequence of the group penalties implemented by the Ministry of Finance, thus violating the "fundamental principles of the rule of law".
In particular, the committee was critical of the information provided by the Tax and Customs Administration, both towards its own ministers and the House of Representatives, as well as towards affected parents, the judiciary and the media. There was also criticism of the so-called "Rutte doctrine", a term that originated from a text message from a civil servant to Prime Minister Mark Rutte that was discussed during the interrogations. This doctrine states that communication between officials and ministers did not have to be made public. Since recommendations fell outside the remit of this committee, they urged those involved to find out how this could have been prevented.
Consequences
Political consequences
On 4 December 2019, a motion of no confidence was filed against State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel in a debate on the childcare benefits scandal. The motion was not passed by the House of Representatives, as the coalition parties VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie, the opposition parties GroenLinks and SGP, and independent member Van Haga voted against the motion. On 18 December 2019, Snel announced his resignation during a second debate about the scandal. He was succeeded by two new state secretaries: Alexandra van Huffelen and Hans Vijlbrief (both D66). The portfolio of Van Huffelen includes the Benefits and Customs departments of the Tax and Customs Administration, and therefore she was given the responsibility for resolving the childcare benefits scandal.
In December 2020, after the report of the parliamentary interrogation committee had been published, the former Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Lodewijk Asscher personally apologised for his role in the childcare benefits scandal. His role in the childcare benefits scandal led to a discussion within the party about his position as party leader and lead candidate for the 2021 general election. Initially, he indicated that he wanted to continue as party leader. However, on 14 January 2021, Asscher announced that he would step down as party leader and candidate MP.
On 10 January 2021, GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver announced a motion of no confidence against the third Rutte cabinet for an upcoming debate on 15 January about the report of the parliamentary interrogation committee. The entire opposition signalled that they either supported the motion or seriously considered supporting it. Shortly before the debate, the cabinet collectively decided to resign and to continue as a demissionary cabinet. In addition, Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy Eric Wiebes decided to resign immediately.
Prosecution
On 28 November 2019, the Parliamentary Committee for Finance explored the possibilities of prosecuting the then State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel and his civil servants. Around the same time, there was also a call within the civil service of the Tax and Customs Administration for disciplinary and judicial measures against the executives involved. After Snel resigned, Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra indicated on 12 January 2020 that he saw no indications of criminal acts by the Tax and Customs Administration. At the insistence of the House of Representatives, Hoekstra nevertheless decided to ask an external agency to reassess the information for criminality and also called on everyone to report information about criminal acts.
On 19 May 2020, the Ministry of Finance filed a complaint against the Tax and Customs Administration as a result of the childcare benefits scandal, related to professional discrimination from 2013 to 2017. MP Pieter Omtzigt expressed his concerns about a criminal investigation by the Public Prosecution Service, given that the Public Prosecution Service itself also played a role in the childcare benefits scandal, by tackling matters under administrative rather than criminal law in consultation with the tax authorities.
In addition to the report filed by the Ministry of Finance, on 28 February 2020, five more reports had been filed with the Public Prosecution Service against the Tax Authorities for criminal acts regarding the childcare benefits scandal. One complaint is known to have been filed by affected parents in December 2019, but no person or reason is known for the others.
On 7 January 2021, the Public Prosecution Service announced that it would not start a criminal investigation based on the Ministry of Finance's report, because after a careful assessment there was no evidence of gagging and professional discrimination. In addition, the Public Prosecution Service referred to the sovereign immunity of the Tax and Customs Administration, which also includes its officials who implemented the policy, provided that they do not act out of their gain or interest. The Public Prosecution Service stated that the incorrect treatment of the parents was due to administrative and political choices, for which accountability belongs in the political domain. A group of affected parents and their lawyers indicated that they intended to sue the Public Prosecution Service to proceed with criminal prosecution.
On 12 January 2021, a group of twenty affected parents filed a complaint against several government officials involved: Tamara van Ark, Wopke Hoekstra, Eric Wiebes, Menno Snel, and Lodewijk Asscher. According to the lawyer representing the parents, these (former) ministers and state secretaries are guilty of a criminal offence and negligence. Because it concerns (former) members of government, this declaration was filed with the Attorney General of the Supreme Court.
On February 3, 2021, the group of affected parents had grown to 80 members. Their lawyer, Vasco Groeneveld, stated that many of the affected parents are not willing to file any complaint against these government officials because they are afraid that it will be used against them. Eighty parents have also filed a complaint against the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte because of his responsibility in the affair. Several released documents show that the Prime Minister had been involved in the decision to take steps since May 2019 while illegal collection by the Tax Authorities continued until November 2019 or longer. Lawyer Groeneveld explained that the Prime Minister was also already aware of abuses by the Benefits department in the autumn of 2018.
Compensation
In March 2020, the Donner Committee recommended compensating wrongly accused parents. A day later, State Secretary Van Huffelen put forward a more extensive compensation scheme, totalling half a billion euros. In July 2020, a special department at the Ministry of Finance was created for this compensation. Because the payment of compensation was slow, the Socialist Party successfully pushed for a Christmas gift of 750 euros, which was paid in December 2020 to 8,500–9,500 of the affected parents. Later that month, 7,000 more received it as well.
In response to the report of the parliamentary interrogation committee, Van Huffelen announced on 22 December 2020 that all wrongly accused parents would receive €30,000 compensation, regardless of the financial loss, unless they qualify for higher compensation. This should take place within four months, for which the recovery operation will be expanded.
In July 2020, it became public that State Secretary Snel wanted to compensate the victimised parents in the CAF 11 Hawaii case earlier, in June 2019. This was rejected at that time by the cabinet, amongst other things, because they wanted to wait for the Donner Committee's report and for fear of setting a precedent. There was also a dispute between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Finance about who would pay for the compensation.
See also
De Jacht op Meral Ö – 2024 Dutch dramafilm about the scandal
British Post Office scandal – similar multi-year government intransigence in the United Kingdom.
Robodebt scheme – controversial Australian automated data-matching program for welfare debt recovery, scrapped in 2020.
References
External links
2021 in the Netherlands
2021 scandals
21st-century scandals
Discrimination in the Netherlands
Financial_scandals
Government by algorithm
Political scandals in the Netherlands
Welfare fraud | Dutch childcare benefits scandal | [
"Engineering"
] | 5,178 | [
"Government by algorithm",
"Automation"
] |
66,392,176 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen%20COVID-19%20vaccine | The Janssen COVID19 vaccine, (Ad26.COV2.S) sold under the brand name Jcovden, is a COVID19 vaccine that was developed by Janssen Vaccines in Leiden, Netherlands, and its Belgian parent company Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of American company Johnson & Johnson.
It is a viral vector vaccine based on a human adenovirus that has been modified to contain the gene for making the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID19. The body's immune system responds to this spike protein to produce antibodies. The vaccine requires only one dose and does not need to be stored frozen.
Clinical trials for the vaccine were started in June 2020, with phaseIII involving around 43,000 people. In January 2021, Janssen announced that 28 days after a completed vaccination, the vaccine was 66% effective in a one-dose regimen in preventing symptomatic COVID19, with an 85% efficacy in preventing severe COVID19 and 100% efficacy in preventing hospitalization or death caused by the disease.
The vaccine has been granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a conditional marketing authorization by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. In June 2023, the FDA revoked the emergency use authorization for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at the request of its manufacturer.
Because cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome and Guillain-Barré syndrome have been reported after receipt of the Janssen COVID19 vaccine, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends "preferential use of mRNA COVID19 vaccines over the Janssen COVID19 vaccine, including both primary and booster doses administered to prevent COVID19, for all persons aged 18 years of age and older. The Janssen COVID19 vaccine may be considered in some situations, including for persons with a contraindication to receipt of mRNA COVID19 vaccines." In February 2022, Johnson & Johnson announced it has temporarily suspended production of the vaccine though they also noted that it will likely resume at some point in the future and that it will honor all pre-existing contracts that oblige Janssen to supply its vaccine by using the millions of already existing vaccine doses in its inventory where requested.
Medical uses
The Janssen COVID19 vaccine is used to provide protection against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to prevent COVID19 in people aged eighteen years and older.
The vaccine is given by intramuscular injection into the deltoid muscle. The initial course consists of a single dose.
There is no evidence that a second booster dose is needed to prevent severe disease in healthy adults. In October 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began recommending a booster dose.
Efficacy
A vaccine is generally considered effective if the estimate is ≥50% with a >30% lower limit of the 95% confidence interval. Efficacy is closely related to effectiveness, which is generally expected to slowly decrease over time.
In October 2021, Janssen reported at a meeting of the US Food and Drug Administration Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) that a single dose produced durable protection against severe disease and hospitalization for at least 6 months in the United States, even when Delta emerged, but also a global decrease in protection against moderate disease attributed to emerging variants outside the US. Janssen also reported that a booster dose given 2 months after the primary dose increased efficacy against symptomatic disease to globally and to in the US and that it also increased efficacy against severe disease to nearly globally.
Pharmacology
The vaccine consists of a replication-incompetent recombinant adenovirus type 26 (Ad26) viral vector expressing the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) protein in a stabilized conformation. The PER.C6 cell line derived from human embryonic retinal cells is used in the production (replication) of the Ad26 adenovirus vector. It is similar to the approach used by the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine which use human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells for adenovirus vector replication.
The Ad26 viral vector lacks the E1 gene required for replication. Therefore, it cannot replicate in the human organism.
Chemistry
The vaccine contains the following excipients: citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol (alcohol), 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HBCD) (hydroxypropyl betadex), polysorbate 80, sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid.
Manufacturing
Unpunctured vials may be stored between for up to twelve hours, and the vaccine can remain viable for months in a standard refrigerator. It is not shipped or stored frozen.
In April 2020, Johnson & Johnson entered a partnership with Catalent to provide large-scale manufacturing of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at Catalent's Bloomington, Indiana facility. In July 2020, the partnership was expanded to include Catalent's facility in Anagni, Italy.
In September 2020, Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing agreed with Johnson & Johnson to support the manufacture of the vaccine, including technology transfer and fill and finish manufacture, at its Grand Rapids, Michigan facility.
In December 2020, Johnson & Johnson and Reig Jofre, a Spanish pharmaceutical company, entered into an agreement to manufacture the vaccine at Reig Jofre's Barcelona facility.
In February 2021, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson struck a deal for Sanofi to provide support and infrastructure at Sanofi's Marcy-l'Étoile, France facility to manufacture approximately twelve million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine per month once authorized.
In March 2021, Johnson & Johnson and Aspen Pharmacare made a deal to manufacture 220 million vaccines at Aspen's Gqeberha facility in Eastern Cape, South Africa. They plan to distribute the vaccine to other countries, mainly in Africa, and also through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program.
In March 2021, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson struck a deal for Merck to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at two facilities in the United States to help expand the manufacturing capacity of the vaccine using provisions of the Defense Production Act. That same month, human error at a plant run by Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore resulted in the spoilage of up to fifteen million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The error, which was caught before the doses left the plant, delayed expected shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine within the United States. As the error had involved combining ingredients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Biden administration gave control of the plant to Johnson & Johnson and said the plant should produce only the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to avoid further mix-ups. In July 2021, the FDA authorized Emergent to resume production (but not distribution) of the Janssen vaccine. 400million doses were destroyed.
Adverse effects
Review of Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) safety monitoring data by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through 21 April 2021, (by which time 7.98million doses of the Janssen COVID19 vaccine had been administered), showed that "97% of reported reactions after vaccine receipt were nonserious, consistent with preauthorization clinical trials data."
The most common side effects of the vaccine in the trials were usually mild or moderate, occurred within two days after vaccination, and got better within 1 or 2 days.
The most common side effects are pain at the injection site, headache, tiredness, muscle pain, and nausea, affecting more than 1 in 10 people. Coughing, joint pain, fever, chills, redness, and swelling at the injection site occurred in less than 1 in 10 people. Sneezing, tremor, throat pain, rash, sweating, muscle weakness, pain in the arms and legs, backache, weakness, and feeling generally unwell occurred in less than 1 in 100 people. Rare side effects (that occurred in less than 1 in 1,000 people) are hypersensitivity (allergy) and itchy rash.
An increased risk of the rare and potentially fatal thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) has been associated with mainly younger female recipients of the vaccine. This syndrome, marked by formation of blood clots in the blood vessels in combination with low levels of blood platelets 4–28 days after the vaccines administration, occurred at a rate of about 7 per 1 million vaccinated women aged 18–49 years old and it occurs more rarely in other populations (i.e., women 50 years and older and men of all ages).
Allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, can occur in rare cases within a few minutes to one hour after receiving a dose.
In May 2021, with 7.98 million doses administered, the CDC reported four cases of anaphylaxis after vaccination (none of which resulted in death) and 28 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (of which three resulted in death).
In July 2021, the US fact sheet for the vaccine was updated to indicate that there may be an increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the 42 days following vaccination. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) listed Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) as a very rare side effect of COVID19 Vaccine Janssen and added a warning in the product information.
In August 2021, the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) recommended updating the product information to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that "cases of dizziness and tinnitus (ringing or other noises in one or both ears) are linked to the administration of COVID19 vaccine Janssen." Tinnitus was later labeled as "very rare" in a final safety study by the manufacturer.
In December 2021, the CDC accepted the recommendation from a panel of experts for a preference of using the Pfizer-BioNech and Moderna vaccines over the Janssen vaccine due to rare but serious blood clotting events. In May 2022, the FDA limited the use of the Janssen vaccine to those over eighteen unable to access other vaccines or who are otherwise "medically ineligible" for other vaccine options.
History
The stabilized version of the spike proteinthat includes two mutations in which the regular amino acids are replaced with prolineswas developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Vaccine Research Center and the University of Texas at Austin.
During the COVID19 pandemic, Johnson & Johnson committed over toward development of a not-for-profit vaccine in partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Johnson & Johnson said its vaccine project would be "at a not-for-profit level" as the company viewed it as "the fastest and the best way to find all the collaborations in the world to make this happen". In November, Johnson & Johnson announced that Janssen would commit about $604 million and BARDA would commit $454 million to fund the ENSEMBLE trial.
Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Vaccines, in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), was responsible for developing the vaccine candidate, based on the same technology used to make its Ebola vaccine.
Clinical trials
Preclinical trials indicated that the vaccine effectively protected hamsters and rhesus macaques from SARS‐CoV‐2.
Phase I–II
In June 2020, Johnson & Johnson and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) confirmed that they planned to start clinical trials of the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine in September 2020, with the possibility of phaseI–IIa human clinical trials starting at an accelerated pace in the second half of July.
A phase I–IIa clinical trial started with the recruitment of the first subject in July 2020 and enrolled study participants in Belgium and the US. Interim results from the phaseI–IIa trial established the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of Ad26.COV2.S. With one dose, after 29 days, the vaccine ensured ninety percent of participants had enough antibodies required to neutralize the virus. After 57 days, that number reached one hundred percent. 1x10 viral particles (high dose) provided an increase in the neutralizing-antibody titers compared to 5×10 (low dose). After the second dose 56 days after the first dose among participants between the ages of 18 and 55 years, the incidence of grade 3 solicited systemic adverse events was much lower than that after the first immunization in both the low-dose and high-dose groups, a finding that contrasts with observations with respect to messenger RNA–based vaccines, for which the second dose has been associated with increased reactogenicity. A substudy with 20 participants found that humoral and cell-mediated immune responses, including cytotoxic T cells, lasted for at least 8 months.
Phase III
A phase III clinical trial called ENSEMBLE started enrollment in September 2020 and completed enrollment in December 2020. It was designed as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial intended to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a single-dose vaccine versus placebo in adults aged 18 years of age and older. Study participants received a single intramuscular injection of Ad26.COV2.S at a dose level of 5×10 virus particles on day one. The trial was paused in October 2020, because a volunteer became ill, but the company said it found no evidence that the vaccine had caused the illness and announced in October 2020 that it would resume the trial. In January 2021, Janssen announced safety and efficacy data from an interim analysis of ENSEMBLE trial data, which demonstrated the vaccine was 66% effective at preventing the combined endpoints of moderate and severe COVID19 at 28 days post-vaccination among all volunteers. The interim analysis was based on 468 cases of symptomatic COVID19 among 43,783 adult volunteers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, and the United States. No deaths related to COVID19 were reported in the vaccine group, while five deaths in the placebo group were related to COVID19. During the trial, no anaphylaxis was observed in participants.
A second phase III clinical trial called ENSEMBLE2 started enrollment in November 2020. ENSEMBLE2 differed from ENSEMBLE in that its study participants received two intramuscular (IM) injections of Ad26.COV2.S, one on day1 and the next on day 57. Early results indicated 85% efficacy against severe/critical disease. Plasma from 8 participants showed greater neutralization activity against the Delta variant than against Beta.
Authorizations
European Union
Beginning in December 2020, clinical trial of the vaccine candidate has been undergoing a "rolling review" process by the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), a step to expedite EMA consideration of an expected conditional marketing authorization. In February 2021, Janssen applied to the EMA for conditional marketing authorization of the vaccine. The European Commission approved the COVID19 Vaccine Janssen in March 2021. In Finland, the Janssen vaccine is only offered for those aged 65 and over.
United States
In February 2021, Janssen Biotech applied to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an emergency use authorization (EUA), and the FDA announced that its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) would meet in February to consider the application. In February, ahead of the VRBPAC meeting, briefing documents from Janssen and the FDA were issued; the FDA document recommends granting the EUA, concluding that the results of the clinical trials and the safety data are consistent with FDA EUA guidance for COVID19 vaccines. At the 26 February meeting, VRBPAC voted unanimously (22–0) to recommend that an EUA for the vaccine be issued. The FDA granted the EUA for the vaccine the following day. In February, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the use of the vaccine for those aged 18 and older.
In April 2021, the CDC and the FDA issued a joint statement recommending that use of the Janssen vaccine be suspended, due to reports of six cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—a "rare and severe" blood clot—in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia), in six women between the ages of 18 and 48 who had received the vaccine. The symptoms occurred 6–13 days after they had received the vaccination, and it was reported that one woman had died and a second woman had been hospitalized in critical condition.
In April, the FDA and the CDC determined that the recommended pause regarding the use of the Janssen COVID19 Vaccine in the US should be lifted and use of the vaccine should resume. The EUA and the fact sheets were updated to reflect the risks of thrombosis-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).
The FDA granted an emergency use authorization and the CDC issued a standing order for the use of the vaccine.
In June 2023, the FDA revoked the emergency use authorization for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at the request of its manufacturer.
Elsewhere
In February 2021, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines issued an emergency authorization for the Janssen COVID19 vaccine, as well as the Moderna COVID19 vaccine, the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine, the Gam-COVID-Vac vaccine (Sputnik V), and the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine.
In December 2020, Johnson & Johnson entered into an agreement in principle with the GAVI vaccine alliance to support the COVAX Facility. In February 2021, Johnson & Johnson submitted its formal request and data package to the World Health Organization for an Emergency Use Listing (EUL); an EUL is a requirement for participation in COVAX. Johnson & Johnson anticipated providing up to five hundred million doses through 2022 for COVAX. The World Health Organization issued an EUL for the Janssen COVID19 vaccine Ad26.COV2.S vaccine in March 2021.
In February 2021, the vaccine received emergency authorization in South Africa. In April 2021, South Africa suspended its rollout of the vaccine. The program resumed in April 2021.
In February 2021, Bahrain authorized the vaccine for emergency use.
In February 2021, the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety began a review of Johnson & Johnson's application for approval of its vaccine.
In late November 2020, Johnson & Johnson submitted a rolling review application to Health Canada for approval of its vaccine.
In March 2021, the vaccine received emergency authorization in Colombia.
In March 2021, the vaccine was authorized under interim order in Canada.
In April 2021, the Australian government stated that it would not be purchasing the Janssen vaccine, as it "does not intend to purchase any further adenovirus vaccines at this time". The Therapeutic Goods Administration granted provisional approval for use of the Janssen vaccine in Australia in June 2021.
In April 2021, the vaccine received emergency use authorization in the Philippines.
In May 2021, the vaccine received conditional marketing authorization in the United Kingdom.
In June 2021, the vaccine received emergency use authorization in Chile. The vaccine will be provided via COVAX.
In June 2021, Malaysia's National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) issued conditional registration for emergency use of the vaccine.
In June 2021, COVID19 Janssen Ad26.COV2.S was granted provisional approval in Australia.
In July 2021, the vaccine received provisional approval for use for people aged 18 and above in New Zealand.
In August 2021, Health and Family Welfare Minister of India announced that Johnson and Johnson single-dose vaccine was approved for emergency use in India through a supply agreement with homegrown vaccine maker Biological E. Limited.
In September 2021, National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) issued emergency use authorization in Indonesia.
In November 2021, the vaccine's authorization under interim order in Canada was transitioned to approval for use under the country's Food and Drug Regulations.
In August 2023, the COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen was removed from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods at the request of Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd. The vaccine was never supplied in Australia.
Further development
Homologous prime-boost vaccination
In October 2021, the FDA and the CDC authorized the use of either homologous or heterologous vaccine booster doses.
Heterologous prime-boost vaccination
In October 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized the use of either homologous or heterologous vaccine booster doses. The authorization was expanded to include all adults in November 2021.
Society and culture
About 19.4million doses of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the EU/EEA from authorization to 26 June 2022.
Economics
Given the Janssen vaccine is a single dose and has a lower cost, it was expected to play an important role in low and middle-income countries. Since it is a single dose vaccine, it has been a popular vaccine to distribute to the homeless, the incarcerated, and refugee populations. This is due to the fact that it is difficult for these aforementioned demographics to be contacted for vaccines that require a second dose. With lower costs and lower requirements of storage and distribution in comparison to the COVID19 vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, the Janssen vaccine is more easily transported, stored, and administered. South African health minister Zweli Mkhize announced on 9February 2021 that the country would sell or swap its one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine. Once it did so, South Africa began vaccination using the Janssen vaccine in February 2021, marking the vaccine's first use outside of a clinical trial.
In July 2020, Johnson & Johnson pledged to deliver up to three hundred million doses of its vaccine to the US, with one hundred million upfront and an option for twenty million more. The deal, worth more than $1billion, is funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the U.S. Department of Defense. The deal was confirmed on 5August.
In August 2020, Johnson & Johnson signed a contract with the US federal government for $1billion, agreeing to deliver one hundred million doses of the vaccine to the US following the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grant of approval or emergency use authorization (EUA) for the vaccine. Under its agreement with the US government, Johnson & Johnson was targeted to produce twelve million doses by the end of February 2021, more than sixty million doses by the end of April 2021, and more than one hundred million doses by the end of June 2021. However, in January 2021, Johnson & Johnson acknowledged manufacturing delays would likely prevent it from meeting its contract of twelve million doses delivered to the US by the end of February. In February 2021, through congressional testimony by a company executive, Johnson & Johnson indicated that the company could deliver twenty million doses to the US government by the end of March and one hundred million doses in the first half of 2021.
In February 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced that it planned to ship the vaccine immediately following authorization.
In March 2021, the Canadian government placed an order with Johnson & Johnson for ten million doses, with an option to purchase up to twenty-eight million more; on 5March, the vaccine became the fourth to receive Health Canada approval.
Shipments of the vaccine were scheduled to start in the second half of April 2021, with a commitment to deliver at least two hundred million doses to the EU in 2021.
The European distribution of the vaccine was slightly delayed until the EMA decided that rare cases of vaccine-induced blood clots did not outweigh the benefits of helping to fight the COVID19 pandemic.
Controversies
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed concern about the vaccine because the cell line Per.C6, which is used in development and production, was originally derived from the retinal tissue of an 18-week-old fetus electively aborted in 1985. Although the use of fetal tissue in vaccine development has become common since the 1930s, especially with cell-based vaccines, there are currently alternatives that do not carry the same potential ethical concerns as the Janssen vaccine. Some bioethicists dismiss that ethical concerns to using cells derived from ethically compromised sources should be addressed or alternatives sought. Others advance the view that the cells used for COVID19 vaccines are thousands of generations removed from their source material and do not contain any fetal tissue.
In December 2020, the Vatican published a note approved by Pope Francis, stating that "...all [COVID-19] vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience..." However, the key objection to using these vaccines still remains.
In September 2021, after criticism that doses of its single-shot COVID19 vaccine produced in Aspen Pharmacare's facility in South Africa were being exported to Europe, millions of doses that had been shipped to Europe and stored in warehouses will be returned to Africa, and newly manufactured doses will be shipped to African countries.
Misinformation
Videos on video-sharing platforms circulated around May 2021 showing people having magnets stick to their arms after receiving the vaccine, purportedly demonstrating the conspiracy theory that vaccines contain microchips, but these videos have been debunked.
Notes
References
External links
Adenoviridae
American COVID-19 vaccines
Janssen Pharmaceutica
Drugs developed by Johnson & Johnson
Products introduced in 2020
Viral vector vaccines
Withdrawn drugs
2020 in biotechnology
2020 in medicine | Janssen COVID-19 vaccine | [
"Chemistry"
] | 5,449 | [
"Drug safety",
"Withdrawn drugs"
] |
66,393,505 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%20Peter%27s%20Medal | The St Peter's Medal is awarded annually by the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) for contributions to the surgical field of urology.
The medal was designed and produced by sculptor William Bloye of the Birmingham School of Art and presented to the BAUS in 1948 by Bernard Joseph Ward, the BAUS's first vice-president. The first medal was awarded in 1949 to J. B. Macalpine who was the first to report bladder cancers associated with the dye industry. St Peter on the medal is identified by a key engraved on the bible that he holds. On the reverse is a laurel wreath within which the recipient's name is engraved, and around the circumference are the names of Edwin Hurry Fenwick, Peter Freyer and John Thomson-Walker.
Origin and history
The St Peter's Medal was designed and produced by sculptor William Bloye of the Birmingham School of Art, for the purpose of being awarded to a person who has made significant contributions to the field of urology and is a member of the British Isles or Commonwealth.
The stamping die for the medal was presented to the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) in 1948 by Bernard Joseph Ward, the BAUS's first vice-president and urologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The first medal was awarded in 1949 to J. B. Macalpine who first reported bladder cancers associated with the dye industry. It has subsequently been awarded annually by the BAUS, usually to one recipient, apart from 1951, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2014, when there were two recipients.
The medal is engraved with the names of the three teachers who influenced Bernard Ward: Edwin Hurry Fenwick, Peter Freyer and John Thomson-Walker. On presenting the medal in 1948, Ward stated in his speech that "although they were individually attached to other hospitals, they all came together in one hospital, St. Peter's; and the suggestion therefore was that in order to honour all three of them, we should call it the St. Peter's Medal. The hospital, the first urological hospital in Britain, was named after Saint Peter, whose name derives from the Latin for rock, petrus, and who was said by Christ to be the foundation upon which the Christian church was to be constructed.
St Peter on the medal is identified by the iconography of a key engraved on the bible that he holds. On the reverse of the medal is a laurel wreath, within which the recipient's name is engraved, and around the wreath are the names of Fenwick, Freyer and Thomson-Walker.
Recipients
In 1951, the medal was presented for the second time, and for the first time to two recipients, when Ronald Ogier Ward and Terence J. Millin were given the award. In 1959 the medal was awarded to Harold H. Hopkins, a physicist, and in 2006 to Alison Brading, a physiologist. Other recipients have included Sir Michael Woodruff, Richard Turner-Warwick, John Wickham, Howard Kynaston, Geoffrey Chisholm, John M. Fitzpatrick, Roger Kirby and Prokar Dasgupta.
Influence
In 1975 the International Medical Society of Paraplegia proposed to offer a similar award based on the BAUS's St Peter's Medal.
See also
List of recipients of the St Peter's Medal
References
Awards established in 1948
Urology
Medicine awards | St Peter's Medal | [
"Technology"
] | 692 | [
"Science and technology awards",
"Medicine awards"
] |
66,393,853 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5182%20aluminium%20alloy | 5182 Aluminium alloy has magnesium and manganese as minor elements. 5182 Aluminium alloy is used in the automobile industry for making various parts of vehicles.
Composition
Mechanical properties
Thermal properties
Applications
Audi A8 (D2)’s structural panel
BMW Z8's inner panel
Rolls-Royce Phantom's structural panel
Aluminium can (top part)
Aluminium alloy table
References | 5182 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 76 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,394,140 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1070%20aluminium%20alloy | 1070 is a pure aluminium alloy. It is a wrought alloy with a high corrosion resistance and an excellent brazing ability.
1070 Aluminium alloy has aluminium, iron, silicon, zinc, vanadium, copper, titanium, magnesium, and manganese as minor elements.
Chemical Composition
Applications
Aluminium 1070 alloy is used in the following areas:
General industrial components
Building and construction
Transport
Electrical material
PS plates
Strips for ornaments
Communication cables
Refrigerator and freezer cabinets
References
Aluminium alloy table
Aluminium alloys | 1070 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 98 | [
"Alloys",
"Alloy stubs",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,394,302 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1145%20aluminium%20alloy | 1145 Aluminium alloy is a nearly pure aluminium alloy with minor impurities like copper, manganese, magnesium, zinc, titanium, silicon and iron.
Chemical composition
Physical properties
References
Aluminium alloy table
Aluminium alloys | 1145 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 42 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,395,107 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2C-T-3 | 2C-T-3 (also initially numbered as 2C-T-20) is a lesser-known psychedelic drug related to compounds such as 2C-T-7 and 2C-T-16. It was named by Alexander Shulgin but was never made or tested by him, and was instead first synthesised by Daniel Trachsel some years later. It has a binding affinity of 11nM at 5-HT2A and 40nM at 5-HT2C. It is reportedly a potent psychedelic drug with an active dose in the 15–40 mg range, and a duration of action of 8–14 hours, with visual effects comparable to related drugs such as methallylescaline.
See also
2C-T-2
2C-T-4
3C-MAL
References
2C (psychedelics)
Entheogens
Thioethers
Amines | 2C-T-3 | [
"Chemistry"
] | 186 | [
"Amines",
"Bases (chemistry)",
"Functional groups"
] |
66,395,191 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava%20Epstein | Slava Epstein is an American academic, researcher and entrepreneur working in the field of Microbial ecology. He is currently a professor in the biology department of Northeastern University and co-founder of NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals. As a researcher his most covered contribution is the development of the Isolation chip (iChip) and the discovery of a new antibiotic, Teixobactin. Epstein's research has been published in many leading scientific journals including Nature and Science.
Early life
Slava Epstein was born in the Soviet Union in a Jewish family. As a kid he was fascinated with astronomy and dreamed of being a physicist, however due to strict Soviet anti-semitic quotas he was advised to switch to biology.
Education
Slava Epstein received an M.S. in marine biology from Moscow State University in 1981 and PhD in microbial ecology from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in 1986. For his research he traveled to the White Sea to study protozoan organisms.
Immigration to the United States
Epstein immigrated with his family from the Soviet Union in late 1980's. He first volunteered, then completed a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Since 1992, he has worked at Northeastern University, where he is a professor in the biology department.
Career
His main field of research is microbial ecology along with cultivation and discovery of previously unculturable microorganisms. Along with Kim Lewis, he is credited with development of the Isolation Chip (iChip). He was on the team along with Kim Lewis that discovered a previously unknown antibiotic Teixobactin, by screening soil bacteria using novel cultivation methods, particularly by cultivating the Eleftheria terrae, the antibiotic-producing bacteria in soil, which is the organism's natural environment.
Awards and honors
Foreign Policy Magazine Leading Global Thinkers 2015, along with Kim Lewis. For the discovery of antibiotic Taixobactin in a pile of dirt.
Bibliography
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Soviet marine biologists
Ecologists
Pharmaceutical company founders
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Soviet Jews
Moscow State University alumni
Northeastern University faculty | Slava Epstein | [
"Environmental_science"
] | 435 | [
"Ecologists",
"Environmental scientists"
] |
66,395,488 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%20Union%20of%20Chemical%2C%20Footwear%2C%20Rubber%2C%20Leather%20and%20Non-Metallic%20Employees | The National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non-Metallic Employees (NUCFRLANMPE) is a trade union representing workers in various industries in Nigeria.
The union was founded in 1996, when the Government of Nigeria merged the weak Footwear, Leather and Rubber Products Workers' Union of Nigeria with the strong National Union of Chemical and Non-Metallic Products Workers. Like both its predecessors, it affiliated to the Nigeria Labour Congress. The union had about 40,000 members in 2013, but following job losses in the industry, by 2018 it had only 20,000 members.
Presidents
1996: Lucas Damulak
2000: Gbadebo Moses Ajibade
2005: Boniface A. Isok
2016: Babatunde Olatunji
References
Chemical industry trade unions
Nigeria Labour Congress
Plastics and rubber trade unions
Trade unions established in 1996
Trade unions in Nigeria | National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non-Metallic Employees | [
"Chemistry"
] | 177 | [
"Chemical industry trade unions"
] |
66,396,699 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambrequin%20arch | The lambrequin arch, also known as (or related to) the muqarnas arch, is a type of arch with an ornate profile of lobes and points. It is especially characteristic of Moorish and Moroccan architecture.
The "muqarnas arch" is both another name for this type of arch as well as a more specific type of arch whose intrados (inner surfaces) are made up of muqarnas sculpting, which has a very close resemblance to the lambrequin arch. Some scholars speculate that the lambrequin arch was itself derived from the use of muqarnas in archways. Moreover, lambrequin arches were indeed commonly used with muqarnas sculpting along the intrados of the arch. Its origins are also traced further back to the "mixtilinear" arches seen in the oratory of the 11th-century Aljaferia Palace in Zaragoza.
This type of arch was introduced into the Maghreb and Al-Andalus regions during the Almoravid period (11th–12th centuries), with an early appearance in the funerary section of the Qarawiyyin Mosque (in Fez) dating from the early 12th century. It was a Maghrebi innovation that grew in importance during the following Almohad period. It remained common in the subsequent architecture of the region, in many cases used to highlight the arches near the mihrab area of a mosque. Muqarnas arches are also found abundantly the Alhambra palaces in Granada, for example, particularly the Court of Lions.
See also
Horseshoe arch
Multifoil arch
References
Islamic architectural elements
Moorish architecture
Architecture in Spain
Architectural elements
Architecture in Morocco | Lambrequin arch | [
"Technology",
"Engineering"
] | 351 | [
"Building engineering",
"Architectural elements",
"Components",
"Architecture"
] |
66,397,237 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V1370%20Aquilae | V1370 Aquilae, also known as Nova Aquilae 1982, is a nova that appeared in the constellation Aquila during 1982. It was discovered by Minoru Honda of Kurashiki, Japan at 20:30 UT on 27 January 1982. At that time the Sun had moved just far enough from Aquila to allow the nova to be seen in the morning sky. Although it was discovered photographically, its apparent magnitude was 6–7, making it potentially visible to the naked eye under ideal conditions. A possible magnitude 20 progenitor was located on the Palomar Sky Survey prints. Spectra of the object were taken in February 1982 at Asiago Astrophysical Observatory, which confirmed that it is a nova.
V1370 Aquilae faded rapidly after its discovery, and it had dimmed by three magnitudes in 13 days, making it a "fast" nova in the classification scheme of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. The light curve passed through a local minimum 43 days after the nova's discovery. That "dust dip", about 1 magnitude deep, resulted in the light curve being classified as type D.
V1370 Aquilae erupted one year before the launch of the IRAS satellite, and it was detected by that satellite in the 12 and 25 micron bands. The fading nova was also observed from the ground in the near and mid infrared by Bode et al., who concluded that either dust formed at an unusually early time in the nova event, or it was already present before the 1982 eruption occurred.
All novae are binary stars, with a "donor" star orbiting a white dwarf. The stars are so close to each other that material is transferred from the donor to the white dwarf. In the case of V1370 Aquilae, Shara et al. estimated, based on the amplitude of the outburst and the rate of fading, that the mass of the white dwarf is 1.13. Their models indicate that the white dwarf is accreting mass from the donor at a rate of , and it will erupt as a nova every ~4000 years, after of material has been accreted. V1370 Aquilae is a "neon nova", a nova with a high mass white dwarf that ejects some of the white dwarf itself, along with the products of the thermonuclear runaway on the surface, during the nova event.
References
Novae
Aquila (constellation)
19820127
Aquilae, V1370 | V1370 Aquilae | [
"Astronomy"
] | 513 | [
"Novae",
"Astronomical events",
"Aquila (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
66,399,451 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting%20on%20Frameworks | Counting on Frameworks: Mathematics to Aid the Design of Rigid Structures is an undergraduate-level book on the mathematics of structural rigidity. It was written by Jack E. Graver and published in 2001 by the Mathematical Association of America as volume 25 of the Dolciani Mathematical Expositions book series. The Basic Library List Committee of the Mathematical Association of America has recommended its inclusion by undergraduate mathematics libraries.
Topics
The problems considered by Counting on Frameworks primarily concern systems of rigid rods, connected to each other by flexible joints at their ends; the question is whether these connections fix such a framework into a single position, or whether it can flex continuously through multiple positions. Variations of this problem include the simplest way to add rods to a framework to make it rigid, or the resilience of a framework against the failure of one of its rods.
To study this question, Graver has organized Counting on Frameworks into four chapters. The first chapter studies square grids and methods of cross bracing the grid to make it rigid, as a way of introducing the notion of the degrees of freedom of a mechanical system. The second chapter provides an introduction to graph theory, the one-dimensional theory of rigidity through the analysis of the connected components of graphs, and a reformulation of the grid bracing problem in terms of connectivity of an associated bipartite graph. Chapter three concerns two-dimensional rigidity, the concepts of infinitesimal and generic rigidity, the combinatorial and algorithmic aspects of the subject, and the obstacles to extending this theory to three dimensions. A final chapter describes the history of rigidity theory, applications including mechanical linkages, geodesic domes, tensegrity, the rigidity of molecules in chemistry, and even art. It also discusses open problems for research in this area.
Audience and reception
Counting on Frameworks expects its readers to be familiar with multivariable calculus, but beyond that level of background material it does not demand much mathematical sophistication. More generally, the editors of Mathematika recommend it to "Any reader with at least a slight mathematical background". To avoid demanding too much background of its readers, it is unable to present full proofs of some of its results, instead presenting them as intuitive proof sketches. A more advanced and rigorous treatment of the same material can be found in Combinatorial Rigidity (1993), a graduate textbook co-authored by Graver.
It includes exercises for students, making it suitable as an undergraduate textbook. Reviewer Tiong Seng Tay describes it as "an excellent expository book".
References
Mathematics books
2001 non-fiction books
Mathematics of rigidity | Counting on Frameworks | [
"Physics"
] | 535 | [
"Mathematics of rigidity",
"Mechanics"
] |
66,399,990 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1200%20aluminium%20alloy | 1200 Aluminium alloy has aluminium as the major element, and has silicon, zinc, copper, titanium and manganese as minor elements.
Chemical Composition
Mechanical Properties
Applications
Applications of 1200 Aluminium alloy are listed below:
Construction and roofing
Holloware
Equipment and containers for food and chemical industries
Ship building
Fin-stocks
Bottle caps
Automobiles
Furniture and lighting
Sounding boards
Conductive materials
References
Aluminum alloy table
Aluminium alloys | 1200 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 78 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,400,004 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yariv%20reagent | Yariv reagent (1,3,5-tri(p-glycosyloxyphenylazo)-2,4,6-trihydroxybenzene) is a glycosylated phenolic compound that binds strongly to galactans and arabinogalactan proteins. It can therefore be used in their detection, quantification, precipitation, isolation, staining, and interfere with their function. It was initially synthesised in 1962 as an antigen for carbohydrate-binding antibodies but has subsequently become more broadly used. There are many variants of Yariv reagents which vary in the glycosyl groups on the outside of the structure, typically glucose, galactose, and mannose.
A biographical article about Joseph Yariv was published by the Journal of Applied Crystallography.
References
Azo compounds
Glycosides | Yariv reagent | [
"Chemistry"
] | 188 | [
"Glycobiology",
"Carbohydrates",
"Glycosides",
"Biomolecules"
] |
66,400,099 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1230%20%28VAD23%29%20aluminium%20alloy | 1230 Aluminium Alloy has aluminium as the major element, and has silicon, zinc, copper, titanium, vanadium, manganese and magnesium as minor elements.
Chemical Composition
Aluminum alloy table
Aluminium alloys
References | 1230 (VAD23) aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 43 | [
"Alloys",
"Alloy stubs",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,400,115 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1350%20aluminium%20alloy | 1350 aluminium alloy is nearly pure aluminium consist of minimum of weight percentage of 99.5% of Aluminium.
Chemical Composition
Physical Properties
Other Designations
Applications
Electrical conductors.
References
Aluminium alloy table | 1350 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 38 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,400,165 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1370%20aluminium%20alloy | 1370 Aluminium alloy is primarily aluminium (≥99.7%) alloyed with small amounts of boron, chromium, copper, gallium, iron, magnesium, manganese, silicon, vanadium and zinc.
Properties of Aluminium alloy
References
Aluminium alloys | 1370 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 57 | [
"Alloys",
"Alloy stubs",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,400,985 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsegregation | Microsegregation is a non-uniform chemical separation and concentration of elements or impurities in alloys after they have solidified.
References
Alloys
Chemistry | Microsegregation | [
"Chemistry"
] | 31 | [
"Chemical mixtures",
"Alloys",
"Physical chemistry stubs",
"Alloy stubs"
] |
66,402,024 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6009%20aluminium%20alloy | 6009 Aluminium alloy has minor elements as silicon, iron, magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper, chromium, and titanium.
Chemical Composition
Mechanical Properties
Thermal properties
Applications
Body-panel
Body-structure and parts
References
Aluminium–magnesium–silicon alloys | 6009 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 52 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,085 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6010%20aluminium%20alloy | 6010 Aluminium alloy has Aluminium as the major element, and has silicon, magnesium, manganese and zinc as minor elements.
Chemical composition
Mechanical Properties
Thermal Properties
References
Aluminium–magnesium–silicon alloys | 6010 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 40 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,158 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6013%20aluminium%20alloy | 6013 aluminium alloy consist of magnesium, silicon, copper, manganese, iron, zinc, chromium, and titanium as minor alloying elements.
Chemical Composition
Mechanical Properties
Applications
Valves
Machine parts
Munitions
ABS Braking systems
Hydraulic applications
Roller blade parts
References
Aluminium–magnesium–silicon alloys | 6013 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 57 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,218 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%20aluminium%20alloy | 2004 Aluminium is aluminium alloy in 2xxx series, which has Copper as main alloying element and some impurity elements.
Chemical Composition
References
Aluminium–copper alloys | 2004 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 34 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,353 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%20aluminium%20alloy | 2017 Aluminium alloy has copper, iron, magnesium, manganese and silicon as main alloying elements.
Chemical composition
Mechanical properties
Thermal properties
Aluminium alloy table
References
Aluminium–copper alloys | 2017 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 36 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,429 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2090%20aluminium%20alloy | 2090 Aluminium alloy consists of copper, lithium, zirconium as minor elements and other impurity alloying elements.
Chemical composition
Physical properties
Mechanical properties
Thermal properties
Applications
Aluminium 2090 alloy is used in aircraft components.
Aircraft floor bulkhead stiffeners
Wing leading and trailing edges
Fuselage bulkhead webs
Aluminium alloy table
References
Aluminium–copper alloys | 2090 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 71 | [
"Alloys",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,402,539 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2091%20aluminium%20alloy | 2091 aluminium has chromium, copper, iron, lithium, magnesium as minor alloying elements.
Chemical composition
Properties
Aluminium alloy table
References
Aluminium alloys
Aluminium–copper alloys | 2091 aluminium alloy | [
"Chemistry"
] | 36 | [
"Alloys",
"Alloy stubs",
"Aluminium alloys"
] |
66,403,274 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladostephus%20hirsutus | Cladostephus hirsutus is a marine brown alga.
Description
This is a medium-size brown alga growing to about 20 cm length. Its fronds are covered with distinct whorls of secondary branches, giving the species a hairy appearance, the source of its specific epithet “hirsutus”.
Habitat
This alga occurs in the lower intertidal, tidepools and upper subtidal of rocky shores.
Distribution
This species has been recorded world-wide in temperate regions, e.g. from the Mediterranean Sea, the European Atlantic coasts (including the British Isles, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Spain, and Portugal), the Atlantic shores of the United States, the Pacific shores of Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand.
References
Brown algae
Seaweeds | Cladostephus hirsutus | [
"Biology"
] | 161 | [
"Seaweeds",
"Algae",
"Brown algae"
] |
58,407,423 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UxuA%20RNA%20motif | The uxuA RNA motif is a conserved RNA structure that was discovered by bioinformatics.
uxuA motif RNAs are found in the bacterial genus Vibrio.
uxuA RNAs occur upstream of genes that encode mannonate dehydratase, which functions as part of the catabolism of glucuronate. This gene association could suggest that uxuA RNAs operate as cis-regulatory elements to control expression of the mannonate dehydratase genes. However, since the RNAs are found in relatively closely related organisms, it is possible that the apparent gene association arose by chance. Therefore, uxuA RNAs might also function in trans as small RNAs.
References
Non-coding RNA | UxuA RNA motif | [
"Chemistry"
] | 152 | [
"Molecular biology stubs",
"Molecular biology"
] |
58,408,335 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPulse%20Medical | iPulse Medical is an Israeli start-up company that makes femtech products. The company's brand and main product, Livia, is a menstrual pain relief wearable device.
History
iPulse Medical was founded by Israeli tech entrepreneur Chen Nachum in 2015. The idea for Livia came from his father, Zvi Nachum, a medical products inventor. In April 2016, The company launched Livia on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, where it had generated sales of $1,741,622 as of December 19, 2018.
On April 11, 2018, the product received the Gold prize for Health & Wellness: Women's Wellbeing category at the Edison Awards.
Technical
Livia is used during menstruation to eliminate cramps and pain. It employs the principle of gate control theory to organically block pain receptors by sending continuous electrical pulses through electrodes along the body's nerve pathways in order to block out the pain signals before they reach the central nervous system. This is done using a specific frequency and length of its electrical pulses, which block out the specific type of pain associated with menstruation. The device has undergone a clinical trial, of which no results have been published.
Further reading
Femtech
References
Science and technology in Israel
Medical technology
Women's health | IPulse Medical | [
"Biology"
] | 275 | [
"Medical technology"
] |
58,409,634 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical%20%26%20Astrophysical%20Fluid%20Dynamics | Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering applications of fluid dynamics in the fields of astrophysics and geophysics. It was established in 1970 as Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, obtaining its current name in 1977. It is published by Taylor & Francis and the editor-in-chief is Andrew Soward (Newcastle University). According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 1.451.
References
External links
Geophysics journals
Astrophysics journals
Fluid dynamics journals
Academic journals established in 1970
Bimonthly journals
Taylor & Francis academic journals
English-language journals | Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry"
] | 124 | [
"Astrophysics journals",
"Fluid dynamics journals",
"Astrophysics",
"Fluid dynamics"
] |
58,410,521 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive%20%28linguistics%29 | An expletive is a word or phrase inserted into a sentence that is not needed to express the basic meaning of the sentence. It is regarded as semantically null or a placeholder. Expletives are not insignificant or meaningless in all senses; they may be used to give emphasis or tone, to contribute to the meter in verse, or to indicate tense.
The word "expletive" derives from the Latin word : serving to fill out or take up space.
In these examples in fact and indeed are expletives:
The teacher was not, in fact, present.
Indeed, the teacher was absent.
In conversation the expressions like and you know, when they are not meaningful, are expletives. The word so, used as an introductory particle (especially when used in answer to a question), has become a common modern expletive. Oaths or profanities may be expletives, as occurs in Shakespeare:
"Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio."
Hamlet, act 1, scene 5, line 134
"Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you."
Othello, act 1, scene 1, line 109
Profanity
The word "expletive" is also commonly defined as a profanity or curse word, apart from its grammatical function. An early example occurs in a sermon by Isaac Barrow published in 1741.
" … his oaths are no more than waste and insignificant words, deprecating being taken for serious, or to be understood that he meaneth anything by them, but only that he useth them as expletive phrases … to plump his speech, and fill up sentences."
Sermons on Evil-speaking, Isaac Barrow (1741)
Not all profanities are grammatical expletives (and vice versa). For example, in the sentence, "The bloody thing is shit, hey":
"Bloody", as an attributive adjective, is an optional constituent of the sentence (thus not an expletive in the syntactical sense) and is a profanity.
"Shit" is necessary to the sentence, and it is a profanity.
"Hey" is not a profanity, but it is unnecessary.
"Expletive deleted"
The popularity of the phrase "expletive deleted" derives from the Watergate hearings in the United States in the 1970s, where the phrase was used to replace profanity that occurred in the transcripts of conversations that were recorded in the White House.
"Do" as an expletive
At the start of the modern English era, the use of the word "do" as an expletive came into fashion with no fixed principle guiding it. It began to appear often in phrases such as "they do hunt" (rather than "they hunt"), and the practice was slow to fade from use. The lingering and indiscriminate use of the expletive "do" lent a point to Alexander Pope's jibe (which contains an example of "do" as an expletive):
"While expletives their feeble aid do join
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line."
An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope (1711)
Expletive negation
Expletive negation is a term that originated in French language studies. It refers to a sentence construction that contains one or more negations that, from a modern perspective, seem superfluous. An example is the "double-negative" in: "Nobody never lifted a finger to help her." Expletive negation is a standard usage in Old English, and in Middle English, as in this sentence, where, from a modern perspective, "not" and the negative marker "ne" seem to be not required:
"They moche doubted that they shold not fynde theyr counte ne tale."
Golden Legend, William Caxton 1483
Syntactic expletive
A syntactic expletive is a term used in formal linguistic theories. It is a term for a pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required. The basic meaning of the clause is made explicit after the verb. Common forms of construction for sentences that contain a syntactic expletive begin with "it is", "here is", or "there is". The expletive serves as the grammatical subject of the independent clause that it begins. In a clause like "it is raining" the referent of the pronoun "it" is not obvious, and is the subject of discussion and alternate theories among linguists. Syntactic expletives have great significance in the study of the history of languages and cross-cultural comparisons. The term is distinct from the expletives of traditional grammar in that a syntactic expletive has a particular syntactical meaning.
Simple examples of syntactic expletives are the words it and there:
It is a hammer that is needed.
There are hammers in the toolbox.
Expletive, pleonastic, or dummy subjects have been crucial to syntactic argumentation. Their lack of semantic content, and their staunch grammatical aspect provide a method to explore differences between syntax and semantics.
See also
Dummy pronoun
Expletive attributive
Expletive deleted
Expletive infixation
Filler (linguistics)
Morphology (linguistics)
Profanity
References
Grammar
Parts of speech | Expletive (linguistics) | [
"Technology"
] | 1,163 | [
"Parts of speech",
"Components"
] |
58,410,882 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel%20Haurwitz | Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz (born May 20, 1985) is an American biochemist and structural biologist. She is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and president of Caribou Biosciences, a genome editing company.
Early life and education
Haurwitz was born on May 20, 1985. She grew up in Austin, Texas. Her mother is an elementary school teacher and her father, an environmental journalist.
Haurwitz began researching RNA during her undergraduate years. She attended Harvard College where she earned an undergraduate degree. In 2007, she began doctoral studies at University of California, Berkeley. At the age of 21, Haurwitz began working as a graduate student in Jennifer Doudna's laboratory, in 2008 where she completed her doctorate in molecular and cell biology. Haurwitz originally intended on becoming an intellectual property lawyer for biotechnology patents but later chose to continue in science.
Career
In 2011, Haurwitz and Doudna co-founded Caribou Biosciences, a gene editing spinout-startup company. Haurwitz is the company's CEO and president. She holds several patents for CRISPR-based technologies. The firm was initially housed in the basement of the building that housed Doudna's laboratory. The company supports the commercialization of CRISPR technology in healthcare and agriculture. Its researchers explore issues in antimicrobial resistance, food scarcity, and vaccine shortages. The company licensed Berkeley's CRISPR patent and deals with agricultural and pharmaceutical companies and research firms. In 2018, Haurwitz announced that the firm was shifting focus on medicine and developing cancer therapies targeting microbes.
Personal life
She is a long-distance runner and is training for a marathon. Haurwitz knits as a hobby.
Recognition
In 2021, Haurwitz was selected as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst. As part of the program, she attended the annual New Economy Forum held in Singapore, and the Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst Retreat that same year.
Selected works
Papers
References
External links
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Harvard College alumni
American women biochemists
21st-century American chemists
21st-century American women scientists
Scientists from Texas
People from Austin, Texas
1985 births
Living people
21st-century American biologists
Jewish American scientists
American women chief executives
American women company founders
American company founders
21st-century American businesspeople
Jewish women scientists
Jewish women in business
21st-century American businesswomen
Structural biologists
21st-century American Jews | Rachel Haurwitz | [
"Chemistry"
] | 498 | [
"Structural biologists",
"Structural biology"
] |
58,411,753 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalAmp | CalAmp Corporation is an Irvine, California-based provider of Internet of things (IoT) software applications, cloud services, data intelligence and telematics products and services. The company's technology includes edge computing devices and SaaS-based applications for remotely tracking and managing vehicles, drivers, cargo and other mobile assets. The company also owns the patents and trademarks for the LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery System and provides connected car and lot management products.
History
CalAmp was founded as California Amplifier Inc. in Newbury Park, California in 1981, by Jacob Inbar and David Nichols, who worked together at a microwave division of Eaton Corporation. The company originally made amplifiers and other equipment used to transmit microwave signals for satellite video and broadband communications. The company began trading on NASDAQ in 1983.
By 1986, the company had relocated to Camarillo, California, and stopped making amplifiers for the consumer market.
In 1999, the company entered the direct broadcast satellite (DBS) market by acquiring Texas-based Gardiner Group, a satellite dish component provider.
In December 2003, the company acquired communications software company Vytek Corp, for $76.8 million.
In March 2004, the company relocated to Oxnard, California. In August, the company changed its name to CalAmp Corp.
In May 2006, the company acquired Montreal, Canada-based wireless radio company Dataradio, to expand its wireless data communications business for public safety and machine to machine (M2M) applications. It also acquired the mobile resource management line from Carlsbad, California-based location tracking company TechnoCom to offer enterprise asset tracking and fleet management applications.
In 2007, the company acquired the Aercept Vehicle Tracking business from wireless telematics service provider AirIQ.
By 2010, the company was focused on selling IoT hardware and DBS solutions.
In December 2012, the company announced the acquisition of Herndon, Virginia-based fleet management application provider Wireless Matrix Corp for $53 million.
In February 2013, the company announced a stock offering that was intended in part to fund the Wireless Matrix Corp purchase.
In April 2015, CalAmp bought telematics startup Crashboxx, a provider of a vehicle risk management system for insurance companies and fleet operators.
By 2016, the company had phased out its DBS business and shifted its focus to SaaS-based telematics products and services. In February, CalAmp announced it was acquiring stolen vehicle recovery company LoJack Corporation, for $134 million, and the deal closed in March. In April, the company announced it was moving its headquarters from Oxnard to Irvine, California. In September, the company introduced the LoJack LotSmart automotive dealer inventory management solution and LoJack SureDrive connected car app.
In March 2016, CalAmp acquired the LoJack company for $134 million.
In January 2019, the company launched a smartwatch-sized pet tracking device called Maven, in conjunction with logistics software company CargoSense. In March 2019, the company acquired two LoJack licensees, Car Track in Mexico, and Tracker in the United Kingdom. In April, the company acquired fellow telematics provider Synovia Solutions for $50 million. In March 2020, CEO Michael Burdiek retired, and was replaced by Jeff Gardner.
In 2024, CalAmp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, allowing for a secured deal with its lenders to swap its $229 million in bonds for equity. The company stated that its financial state has been bleak for many years, blaming its acquisition of LoJack and an ill-fated program that stretches customer's payment terms. After CalAmp restructured, it was taken private by a company called Lynrock Lake LP.
References
External links
Official website
Companies based in Irvine, California
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Companies established in 1981
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024
Fleet management
Intelligent transportation systems
Internet of things
Supply chain management
Vehicle telematics
Wireless locating | CalAmp | [
"Technology"
] | 797 | [
"Transport systems",
"Wireless locating",
"Information systems",
"Warning systems",
"Intelligent transportation systems"
] |
58,411,813 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null%20cycle | In atmospheric chemistry, a null cycle is a catalytic cycle that simply interconverts chemical species without leading to net production or removal of any component. In the stratosphere, null cycles and when the null cycles are broken are very important to the ozone layer.
One of the most important null cycles takes place in the stratosphere, with the photolysis of ozone by ultraviolet photons with wavelengths less than 330 nanometers. This photolysis produces a monatomic oxygen that then reacts with the diatomic oxygen producing ozone. There is no net molecular or atomic change, however. Overall, the reaction converts UV photon energy into heat thereby warming the stratosphere.
O3 + hv (λ < 330 nm) → O2 + O (1D)
O (1D) + M → O (3P) + M
O (3P) + O2 → O3
Net: hv → H
The null cycle can be broken in the presence of certain molecules, leading to a net increase or decrease in ozone in the stratosphere. One important example is NOx emissions into the stratosphere. The NOx reacts with both the atomic oxygen and ozone leading to a net decrease in ozone. This is particularly important at night when NO2 cannot photolyze.
NO + O3 → NO2 + O2
NO2 + O(1D) → NO + O2
Net: O3 + O(1D) → 2O2 (net loss of ozone)
Null cycles can also occur in the troposphere. One example is the null cycle that occurs during the day between NOx and ozone.
Tropospheric Null Cycle
O3 + NO → O2 + NO2
NO2 + hν → NO + O(3P)
O (3P) + O2 + M → O3 + M
Net: hv → H
This cycle links ozone to NOx in the troposphere during daytime. In equilibrium, described by the Leighton relationship, solar radiation and the NO2:NO ratio determine ozone abundance, maximizing around noon time.
References
Atmospheric chemistry
Ozone depletion | Null cycle | [
"Chemistry"
] | 436 | [
"nan"
] |
58,415,152 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20chevalieri | Aspergillus chevalieri is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Aspergillus section. The fungi in the Aspergillus section are known for their ability to grow at extremely low water activities. The species was first described in 1926. It has since been reported as an opportunistic pathogen causing skin infections.
The genome of A. chevalieri was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 26.41 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus chevalieri has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
chevalieri
Fungi described in 1926
Fungus species | Aspergillus chevalieri | [
"Biology"
] | 198 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,415,254 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20bisporus | Aspergillus bisporus is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Bispori section. The species was first described in 1971.
The genome of A. bisporus was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 27.10 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus bisporus has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
bisporus
Fungi described in 1971
Fungus species | Aspergillus bisporus | [
"Biology"
] | 164 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,415,451 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20campestris | Aspergillus campestris is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. The species was first described in 1982. It is from the Candidi section. The fungi in the Candidi section are known for their white spores. It has been shown to produce a high number of secondary metabolites.
The genome of A. campestris was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 28.26 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
A. campestris has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
campestris
Fungi described in 1982
Fungus species | Aspergillus campestris | [
"Biology"
] | 190 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,415,827 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimansky%20equation | In thermodynamics, the Shimansky equation describes the temperature dependence of the heat of vaporization (also known as the enthalpy of vaporization or the heat of evaporation):
where:
is the latent heat of vaporization at the temperature ,
is the critical temperature,
is the parameter that is equal to the heat of vaporization at zero temperature (),
is the hyperbolic tangent function.
This equation was obtained in 1955 by Yu. I. Shimansky, at first empirically, and later derived theoretically. The Shimansky equation does not contain any arbitrary constants, since the value of can be determined experimentally and can be calculated if has been measured experimentally for at least one given value of temperature . The Shimansky equation describes quite well the heat of vaporization for a wide variety of liquids. For chemical compounds that belong to the same class (e.g. alcohols) the value of ratio remains constant. For each such class of liquids, the Shimansky equation can be re-written in a form of
where
The latter formula is a mathematical expression of structural similarity of liquids. The value of plays a role of the parameter for a group of curves of temperature dependence of .
Sources
Shimansky Yu. I. В«Structure and physical properties of binary solutions of alcohols В», PhD dissertation, Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv, 1955;
Shimansky Yu. I. В«The temperature dependence of the heat of vaporization of pure liquidsВ» Journal of Physical Chemistry (USSR), v. 32(8), p. 1893, 1958;
Shimanskaya E. T., Shimansky Yu. I. В«Critical state of pure compoundsВ», published by Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv, 1961.
References
Molecular physics | Shimansky equation | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry"
] | 376 | [
"Thermodynamics stubs",
"Molecular physics",
" molecular",
"Thermodynamics",
"nan",
"Atomic",
"Molecular physics stubs",
"Physical chemistry stubs",
" and optical physics"
] |
58,415,878 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20taichungensis | Aspergillus taichungensis is a species of fungus in the family Aspergillaceae.
A. taichyngensis was first described in 1995 and has been isolated from soil in Taiwan. It was first described in 1995. The fungus is from the Candidi section, which is known for white spores. It has been shown to produce candidusin C, terphenyllin, and 3-hydoxyterphenyllin.
The genome of A. taichungensis was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole genome sequencing project. The genome assembly size was 27.12 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
The growth and morphology of A. taichungensis cultivated on Czapek yeast agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates can be seen in the following images:
References
taichungensis
Fungi described in 1995
Fungus species | Aspergillus taichungensis | [
"Biology"
] | 194 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,416,684 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20parvulus | Aspergillus parvulus is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Cervini section. The species was first described in 1961. It was isolated from soil in the United States and from feed ingredients in Argentina. A. parvulus has been reported to produce naphthalenones.
The genome of A. parvulus was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 32.73 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus parvulus has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
parvulus
Fungi described in 1961
Fungus species | Aspergillus parvulus | [
"Biology"
] | 197 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,416,792 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20steynii | Aspergillus steynii is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Circumdati section. The species was first described in 2004. It has been shown to produce Ochratoxin A.
The genome of A. steynii was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 37.85 Mbp.
References
steynii
Fungi described in 2004
Fungus species | Aspergillus steynii | [
"Biology"
] | 120 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,416,846 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20neoauricomus | Aspergillus neoauricomus is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. In 2016, the genome of A. neoauricomus was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 36.86 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus neoauricomus has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
neoauricomus
Fungi described in 2016
Fungus species | Aspergillus neoauricomus | [
"Biology"
] | 154 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,416,926 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20roseoglobulosus | Aspergillus roseoglobulosus is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Circumdati section. The species was first described in 2004. It has been reported to produce ochratoxin A, penicillic acid, xanthomegnin, viomellein, and vioxanthin.
In 2016, the genome of A. roseoglobulosus was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 35.82 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus roseoglobulosus has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
References
roseoglobulosus
Fungi described in 2004
Fungus species | Aspergillus roseoglobulosus | [
"Biology"
] | 216 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,416,995 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus%20sclerotiorum | Aspergillus sclerotiorum is a species of fungus in the genus Aspergillus. It is from the Circumdati section. The species was first described in 1933. A. sclerotiorum has been reported to produce penicillic acid, xanthomegnin, viomellein, and vioxanthin.
In 2016, the genome of A. sclerotiorum was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genome sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the genus Aspergillus. The genome assembly size was 37.97 Mbp.
Growth and morphology
Aspergillus sclerotiorum has been cultivated on both Czapek yeast extract agar (CYA) plates and Malt Extract Agar Oxoid® (MEAOX) plates. The growth morphology of the colonies can be seen in the pictures below.
Heavy Metal Tolerance
In a study published in Dec 2020, cadmium, chromium, and lead tolerant microbes have been isolated from contaminated mining soil and characterized. Six soil samples were collected from Nanjing mine (32°09′19.29″ N 118°56′57.04″ E). Soil samples were taken from the depth of 0~30 cm and processed within 8 h. After the collection of soil samples, these were kept on dry ice and further used to isolate fungi. Aspergillus Sclerotiorum was one of 5 identified strains that exhibited tolerance to all 3 of these heavy metals.
Molecular characterization of isolated fungi was performed and amplified sequences were deposited in the GenBank NCBI database. Metal tolerance of the various strains has been determined by measuring the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) and the tolerance indexes of all the tested strains against Cd, Cr, and Pb. Bioaccumulation capacities of Trichoderma harzianum and Komagataella phaffi have also been assessed. These findings helped us find a novel strain of Komagataella phaffi and suggested it to be the potential mycoremediation microbe to alleviate the contamination of Cd, Cr, and Pb. Future studies of this fungal strain can help us to understand its resistance mechanism against other heavy metals, too.
References
sclerotiorum
Fungi described in 1933
Fungus species | Aspergillus sclerotiorum | [
"Biology"
] | 488 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
58,417,911 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibel%27s%20conjecture | In mathematics, Weibel's conjecture gives a criterion for vanishing of negative algebraic K-theory groups. The conjecture was proposed by and proven in full generality by using methods from derived algebraic geometry. Previously partial cases had been proven by
,
,
,
, and
.
Statement of the conjecture
Weibel's conjecture asserts that for a Noetherian scheme X of finite Krull dimension d, the K-groups vanish in degrees < −d:
and asserts moreover a homotopy invariance property for negative K-groups
References
Algebraic geometry
K-theory | Weibel's conjecture | [
"Mathematics"
] | 114 | [
"Fields of abstract algebra",
"Algebraic geometry"
] |
58,420,280 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam%20garden | A clam garden (k’yuu kudhlk’aat’iija in the Haida language, lux̌ʷxiwēys in the Kwakʼwala language) is a traditional Indigenous management system used principally by Coast Salish peoples. Clam gardens are a form of mariculture, where First Nations peoples created an optimal habitat for clams by modifying the beach. These clam gardens are a food source for both First Nations peoples and animals. They also provide food security as they are a food source that can be readily harvested year-round.
Clam gardens are found along the west coast of North America. Over 2,000 clam gardens have been identified on the coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and California. Though most clam gardens are currently untended, restoration of sections of previously untended clam gardens are occurring in Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring Island and on Russell Island located in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.
Composition
Boulder wall
Once a location was chosen by an individual or a group of First Nations peoples, clam garden construction began with the creation of a boulder or rock wall along the shoreline of a beach. Strong individuals would roll large boulders down to the lowest tideline on the beach, thus creating a rock wall. The rising tide brings sediment over the rock walls, where it accumulates and creates an extended soft sediment beach area, creating ideal clam habitat. The rock wall is low enough that it allows the clam garden to be submerged at high tide, but tall enough that the beach is exposed for harvesting during low tide.
Due to weather and the movement of tides, rock walls require continual maintenance. Historically, clam gardens were regularly tended to by First Nations individuals who moved rocks from inside the clam gardens onto the rock wall. Both archeological evidence and traditional knowledge assert that boulder walls were built up over time and continually maintained. New rocks were regularly added to the top of the boulder wall when First Nations peoples harvested the clam beds.
Sediment
The accumulation of sediment trapped by the boulder wall creates a flatter beach, which is an optimal growing habitat for clams. This sediment has an optimal density for clam growth, free from fine clay and silt particles that are washed away by the high tide.
The density of the sediment was also due to the process of aerating the sand while clams were harvested. Many clam gardens also have a high amount of gravel and shell hash, which aid in aerating the sand. This density allows for freer movement of clams, in addition to easier removal of clams from the sediment.
Animals
Clam gardens are an ideal habitat for many animals. The modified beach attracts growth of many clams, notably: butter, littleneck, cockle and horse clams. Animals such as barnacles, chiton, snails, crabs, eels, mussels, octopus, urchin, and sea cucumbers also live in clam gardens. Other animals such as ghost shrimp and worms are found buried in the loose sediment.
Usage
Food source
Clam gardens were a food source for many Coast Salish peoples, and provided food security to many diverse First Nation communities. This was due to the abundance of clams that could be easily harvested and were readily accessible. Women and children were the primary group tasked with harvesting clams at low tide, though everyone in the community could participate. Once harvested, families could consume the clams immediately or smoke them to be preserved for the winter. Resources of clams, either smoked or harvested from the gardens were important since they served as sustenance when other foods were scarce. Some nations, such as the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, traditionally harvested clams from October to early March so as to avoid the red tide.
Clam gardens were not exclusive to humans but also served as a protein-rich food source for various animals during the spring or summer, such as raccoons, mink, river otters, bears, sea ducks, and geese.
Knowledge transmission
Traditional clam harvesting also allowed for intergenerational knowledge transmission, with Elders passing down knowledge about clam gardens to the next generation. Clam gardens were similar to an outdoor classroom, where traditional knowledge, language and cultural practices could be learned by the community.
Ownership
Each Nation has specific protocols and governance systems around land management, and many access areas are family-based. For clam gardens, families often asserted ownership by regularly tending to the beach and maintaining the rock wall. These clam gardens were stewarded for the next generation. Historically, unmanaged clam gardens could be harvested by anyone in the community. Families could claim ownership by building their own clam garden on an undeveloped beach area in their traditional territory.
Historical age
The exact age of the origin of clam gardening is unknown. In present day, scholars argue that accurately dating clam gardens is difficult due to the rock wall being submerged, in addition to rising sea levels.
Archeologists are studying the ages of clam gardens using methods such as optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating on the rock wall. Scholars are using both methods to gain a better understanding of the age of clam gardens. The results are different depending on the sample as evidence suggests walls were built up by communities over time. Some dating results suggest that clam gardens range from 1000 to 1700 years old, whereas other samples indicate that they date back to 3000–3500 years ago.
Conversely, many First Nations peoples have a different perspective of clam garden creation. For example, Clan Chief Adam Dick, Kwaxsistalla of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation, states that clam gardens have been around "since the beginning of time". Tom Sewid, a native watchman of the Mamalilikulla-Qwe'Qwa'Sot'Em nation, states that his ancestors have maintained clam gardens over "thousands of years", citing clam gardens as proof of title to his traditional lands.
Restoration
"The Clam Garden Network", a loose affiliation of academics, researchers and First Nations groups, was formed to share current research and traditional First Nations practices related to clam garden management.
In 2014, restoration work began to revive two clam gardens in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve in a project between Parks Canada and the Hul'q'umi'num and Saanich nations.
The Swinomish Tribe of Washington built a new clam garden on Kiket Island in 2022. It is believed to be the first clam garden built in the United States in over 200 years.
References
Clams
Aquaculture
Coast Salish
Seafood in Native American cuisine
Indigenous cuisine in Canada
Ethnobiology | Clam garden | [
"Biology",
"Environmental_science"
] | 1,367 | [
"Environmental social science",
"Ethnobiology"
] |
58,420,390 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object%20co-segmentation | In computer vision, object co-segmentation is a special case of image segmentation, which is defined as jointly segmenting semantically similar objects in multiple images or video frames.
Challenges
It is often challenging to extract segmentation masks of a target/object from a noisy collection of images or video frames, which involves object discovery coupled with segmentation. A noisy collection implies that the object/target is present sporadically in a set of images or the object/target disappears intermittently throughout the video of interest. Early methods typically involve mid-level representations such as object proposals.
Dynamic Markov networks-based methods
A joint object discover and co-segmentation method based on coupled dynamic Markov networks has been proposed recently, which claims significant improvements in robustness against irrelevant/noisy video frames.
Unlike previous efforts which conveniently assumes the consistent presence of the target objects throughout the input video, this coupled dual dynamic Markov network based algorithm simultaneously carries out both the detection and segmentation tasks with two respective Markov networks jointly updated via belief propagation.
Specifically, the Markov network responsible for segmentation is initialized with superpixels and provides information for its Markov counterpart responsible for the object detection task. Conversely, the Markov network responsible for detection builds the object proposal graph with inputs including the spatio-temporal segmentation tubes.
Graph cut-based methods
Graph cut optimization is a popular tool in computer vision, especially in earlier image segmentation applications. As an extension of regular graph cuts, multi-level hypergraph cut is proposed to account for more complex high order correspondences among video groups beyond typical pairwise correlations.
With such hypergraph extension, multiple modalities of correspondences, including low-level appearance, saliency, coherent motion and high level features such as object regions, could be seamlessly incorporated in the hyperedge computation. In addition, as a core advantage over co-occurrence based approach, hypergraph implicitly retains more complex correspondences among its vertices, with the hyperedge weights conveniently computed by eigenvalue decomposition of Laplacian matrices.
CNN/LSTM-based methods
In action localization applications, object co-segmentation is also implemented as the segment-tube spatio-temporal detector. Inspired by the recent spatio-temporal action localization efforts with tubelets (sequences of bounding boxes), Le et al. present a new spatio-temporal action localization detector Segment-tube, which consists of sequences of per-frame segmentation masks. This Segment-tube detector can temporally pinpoint the starting/ending frame of each action category in the presence of preceding/subsequent interference actions in untrimmed videos. Simultaneously, the Segment-tube detector produces per-frame segmentation masks instead of bounding boxes, offering superior spatial accuracy to tubelets. This is achieved by alternating iterative optimization between temporal action localization and spatial action segmentation.
The proposed segment-tube detector is illustrated in the flowchart on the right. The sample input is an untrimmed video containing all frames in a pair figure skating video, with only a portion of these frames belonging to a relevant category (e.g., the DeathSpirals). Initialized with saliency based image segmentation on individual frames, this method first performs temporal action localization step with a cascaded 3D CNN and LSTM, and pinpoints the starting frame and the ending frame of a target action with a coarse-to-fine strategy. Subsequently, the segment-tube detector refines per-frame spatial segmentation with graph cut by focusing on relevant frames identified by the temporal action localization step. The optimization alternates between the temporal action localization and spatial action segmentation in an iterative manner. Upon practical convergence, the final spatio-temporal action localization results are obtained in the format of a sequence of per-frame segmentation masks (bottom row in the flowchart) with precise starting/ending frames.
See also
Image segmentation
Object detection
Video content analysis
Image analysis
Digital image processing
Activity recognition
Computer vision
Convolutional neural network
Long short-term memory
References
Image segmentation
Computer vision
Applications of computer vision
Image processing
Machine vision
Film and video technology
Applied machine learning
Cognition
Motion in computer vision | Object co-segmentation | [
"Physics",
"Engineering"
] | 864 | [
"Physical phenomena",
"Robotics engineering",
"Packaging machinery",
"Motion (physics)",
"Machine vision",
"Motion in computer vision",
"Artificial intelligence engineering",
"Computer vision"
] |
58,420,452 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20countries%20by%20number%20of%20births | The following list sorts sovereign states and dependent territories and by the total number of births. Figures are from the 2024 revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects report, for the calendar year 2023.
List of countries by number of births
Countries and dependent territories by the estimated number of births in 2023 according to the World Population Prospects 2024 of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
See also
Total fertility rate
List of countries by total fertility rate
List of countries by birth rate
List of countries by number of deaths
List of people with the most children
List of population concern organizations
Population growth
Sub-replacement fertility
Fertility and intelligence
References
External links
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs - Population Division - World Population Prospects, the 2022 Revision
Births
Births
Demographic economics
Human geography
Fertility
+ | List of countries by number of births | [
"Environmental_science"
] | 159 | [
"Environmental social science",
"Human geography"
] |
58,420,698 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge%20industries | Knowledge industries are those industries which are based on their intensive use of technology and/or human capital. While most industries are dependent in some way on knowledge as inputs, knowledge industries are particularly dependent on knowledge and technology to generate revenue. Some industries that are included in this category include education, consulting, science, finance, insurance, information technology, health service, and communications. The term "knowledge industry" was suggested by Austrian-American economist Fritz Machlup to describe these industries in the context of his new idea of the knowledge economy.
Emergence
The production of knowledge before the Scientific Revolution had little economic impact and was practiced on a small scale. Since that time knowledge has become one of the largest and most important industrial sectors in world commerce. The emergence of knowledge as an industry has been essential in perpetuating the modern capitalist system. A modern capitalist economy relies on continuously developing and changing technology. Where pre-modern economies tended to cater to specific fixed needs, a modern economy functions by creating new needs to create sustainable profits. The knowledge industry is the main creator of needs in modern economic systems and thus plays a vital role in such systems.
Though knowledge industries had been emerging as an important sector of the modern economy, it was not until the 1960s that much study was done on knowledge as a resource or on the roles it plays in industry. Austrian-American economist Fritz Machlup first proposed and popularized the ideas of knowledge industries and the knowledge economy in his 1962 book The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Since the publication of that book, many economists have begun to refine the idea of the knowledge industry. For example, to better research the effect of knowledge industries on the economy at large some economists have created sub-categories within knowledge industries. To study the effect of knowledge industry on the Canadian economy over time, Canadian economists split up the various knowledge industries into categories of low-, medium-, and high-knowledge industries. These categories took into account various attributes of these industries such as wages, proportion of capital spent on research and development, and the proportion of workers with university degrees.
Examples
Education
As a knowledge industry, education accounted for around 30% of the Gross National Product in the United States in the late 1960s. Schools contribute greatly to both the production and intake of knowledge and play a large role in the economy. While it is difficult to quantify the economics of education it can still be easily shown that schools are economic units as they use resources to achieve their goals. Similarly, it is clear that educational institutions and the educational system itself are undergoing a process of industrialization. Schools also have the important economic characteristics of a business in that they employ people to work for them. Additionally, as globalization has increased its influence in all aspects of the economy, higher education has become more tuned to supporting commercial goals, often to the detriment of the non-profit and public sectors.
Communications
The communications industry, including telecommunications, is an important knowledge industry and is characterized as a "medium-knowledge service". Knowledge growth in the communications industry is generally produced by research and development. It is referred to as a medium-knowledge service because of its lower levels of investment in knowledge workers than the high-knowledge services like medicine, education, and the aerospace industry.
Health and medical products
The pharmaceutical industry is a major knowledge industry. In many ways this industry typifies the high-knowledge industries as much of its resources are invested heavily in highly skilled and educated researchers. As a result of the skill and time necessary to develop medications and medical products, pharmaceutical companies employ highly educated people who command high wages.
See also
Knowledge economy
References
Information Age
Business intelligence terms
Social information processing | Knowledge industries | [
"Technology"
] | 738 | [
"Information Age",
"Computing and society"
] |
58,421,659 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique%20Herreros | Enrique García-Herreros Codesido (29 December 1903 - 18 September 1977) was a Spanish humorist, drafter, poster artist, filmmaker and mountaineer.
Luis García Berlanga defined him as the one who invented the promotion and advertising. He found out Nati Mistral and he was the personal manager of Sara Montiel until 12 December 1963.
He died from an accident while climbing Cornión, Picos de Europa, on 18 September 1977.
He was married to the Olympic sportswoman Ernestina Maenza Fernández-Calvo, with whom he had a child.
Filmography
As actor
La vida es magnífica (1965)
Cabaret (1953) as Señor en baño
De Madrid al cielo (1952)
El gran Galeoto (1951) as Nicasio Heredia de la Escosura
La revoltosa (1950) as Mozo de cuerda
Aventuras de Juan Lucas (1949)
Don Quijote de la Mancha (1947) as Doctor Pedro Recio
Senda ignorada (1946) as Espectador
Cinco lobitos (1945)
Espronceda (1945) as Padrino 2
La vida en un hilo (1945) as Taxista
El fantasma y Dª Juanita (1945) as El faquir
El destino se disculpa (1945) as Empresario
El clavo (1944) as Señor bajito
Eloísa está debajo de un almendro (1943) as Acomodador del cine
Yo quiero que me lleven a Hollywood (1931)
As director
La muralla feliz (1948)
María Fernanda, la Jerezana (1947)
Al pie del Almanzor (1942)
As producer
Noches de Casablanca (1963)
References
External links
1903 births
1977 deaths
Draughtsmen
Spanish poster artists
Film directors from Madrid
Spanish mountain climbers
Spanish editorial cartoonists
Mountaineering deaths
Sport deaths in Spain | Enrique Herreros | [
"Engineering"
] | 404 | [
"Design engineering",
"Draughtsmen"
] |
70,805,540 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang%20Ti%20Ming | Chiang Ti Ming (; 27 July 1976 - 6 January 2007) was a Malaysian Chinese particle physicist and child prodigy. He was the youngest student to be admitted to the California Institute of Technology.
Biography
Chiang Ti Ming was a native of Seremban, Malaysia. He was tested to have an IQ of 148 as a child. He displayed an exceptional ability in science and languages in childhood, writing poetry in Chinese and English that expressed his awe of science and eagerness to explore it. In 1988, he made national headlines when he skipped from Form 1 to Form 6 and was preparing to enter university in the US to study physics or computer science. He soon went to INTI International University College to take classes and prepare for university admission. Dr. Lee Fah Onn, the president of the college, said he was very special as he was able to understand abstract ideas.
In 1989, at age 13, he was admitted to the second year of the four-year physics degree programme at the California Institute of Technology, setting a record of the youngest student ever to enter the prestigious university. Unable to obtain Malaysian government scholarship, Chiang was sponsored by private organisations and Malaysian Chinese community.
During his undergraduate years, Chiang's results were also among the top five percent of students, and he was the youngest student ever to receive the Undergraduate Students Merit Award two years in a row. He was a member of the Tau Beta Pi. He earned his B.S. degree with honours in 1992.
In 1992, Chiang was admitted to Cornell University to study for the Ph.D. degree in physics. He earned his doctorate in string theory in 1998 under the guidance of Brian Greene. Then he went to the mathematics department of Harvard University to do a postdoctoral research with Shing-Tung Yau. His mentor Yau said that while he had done good work and had written papers well, he had had trouble interacting with people and had had poor living skills.
Then Chiang began to show signs of mental issues. He returned to Malaysia in 2001, and he was admitted into a hospital in Kuala Lumpur for treatment of depression and withdrawal symptoms in 2002. According to a statement made by his father that year, he became reticent because he was too young to adapt to the environment and the work pressure of American society after receiving his Ph.D., and because he was being viewed differently by others, so he was taken back home for his health. His father also requested the media to stop giving him attention.
He refused to eat nor drink and would not speak over long periods of time. His life had to be sustained by medication. His condition was worsened on 5 January 2007. He was rushed to Tuanku Ja'afar Hospital and died the following day. His death was caused by neurogenic sepsis which was a rare complication of diabetes.
Chiang was survived by his parents and a younger sister. Another younger sister of his drowned at a swimming pool in 1993, aged four.
Publications
References
External links
Malaysian physicists
Malaysian people of Chinese descent
Particle physicists
California Institute of Technology alumni
Cornell University alumni | Chiang Ti Ming | [
"Physics"
] | 621 | [
"Particle physicists",
"Particle physics"
] |
70,805,681 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudania%20jinshanensis | Fudania jinshanensis is a gram-positive species of bacteria from the family Actinomycetaceae, which has been isolated from the faeces of an antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii).
References
Actinomycetales
Bacteria described in 2019
Monotypic bacteria genera | Fudania jinshanensis | [
"Biology"
] | 63 | [
"Bacteria stubs",
"Bacteria"
] |
70,806,710 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD%2046588 | HD 46588 (HR 2401; Gliese 240.1) is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation Camelopardalis. It has an apparent magnitude of 5.44, allowing it to be faintly seen with the naked eye. The object is relatively close at a distance of only 59 light years but is receding with a heliocentric radial velocity of .
HD 46588 is an ordinary F-type main-sequence star with a spectral classification of F7 V. It has 113% the mass of the Sun and 119% its radius. It shines at 182% the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 6,273 K, giving it a yellow white glow. Isochronic measurements place HD 46588's age at 1.27 billion years, but it's poorly constrained. The star's metallicity is 76% that of the Sun and spins modestly with a projected rotational velocity of .
Due to the star's close proximity to Earth and similarity to the Sun, it has been well studied by astronomers. No planets have been found, but a brown dwarf companion was discovered in a WISE survey in 2011. It has a mass of and a temperature of 1360 K. An infrared excess has been discovered around HD 46588, indicating a cold debris disk with a temperature of 60 K.
References
Camelopardalis
F-type main-sequence stars
046588
032439
2401
Brown dwarfs
Circumstellar disks
BD+79 212
0240.1 | HD 46588 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 324 | [
"Camelopardalis",
"Constellations"
] |
70,806,721 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzew%20Gas%20Terminal | The Arzew Gas Terminal is a large and historically important gas terminal on the coast of Algeria.
The plant brought the first natural gas for the UK from 1964. Its natural gas industry is highly important to the economy of Algeria. The plant was the first of its kind, and is now one of the largest.
Background
Natural gas reserves in Algeria in the 1960s were thought to be so large that the country's reserves could supply the whole of Europe for fifty years. The plan was developed by Sir David Milne-Watson of the Gas Council.
Construction
The plant was opened by Ben Bella on Sunday 27 September 1964, with Sir Harry Jones, the chairman of the Gas Council. The plant cost £31m, with a 280-mile pipeline.
A 28-minute industrial film was made about the project, in April 1965 entitled Saharan Venture, made by World Wide Pictures (UK).
Additional plants opened in 1978, 1981 and July 2014.
History
A similar plant at Skikda was planned in 1967, and opened in 1972. On 19 January 2004 an explosion at this site killed 29 people and caused $940m damage.
Revenues to the country's government were worth about £16m per year in 1967.
A new £9.6m gas separation plant was built in 1972, to produce butane and propane, connected to a 500-mile pipeline to the Hassi Messaoud gas field.
A nearby petrochemical plant and associated oil refinery was built in 1973.
By 2005, Algeria was the second-largest exporter of natural gas to Europe, after Russia. It supplied 20% of Europe's gas, including 50% of the natural gas required by Spain.
The £2bn Gassi Touil project was planned to build a new plant at the site in 2009; it was built by Chiyoda Corporation of Japan and Snamprogetti of Italy, and eventually opened in November 2013.
The original gas plant was decommissioned in 2010.
Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia visited the plant on Sunday 1 October 2017, to inaugurate two new natural gas tankers, operated by the Hyproc Shipping Company - the Tessala, named after the town Tessala in Sidi Bel Abbès Province, and Ougarta, named after the Ougarta Range of hills.
Supply to the UK
In the early 1960s Britain's domestic gas was supplied from 28 million tonnes of coal. How to supply Britain with natural gas was heavily discussed by the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries. On Friday 3 November 1961, the Minister for Power authorised the supply of natural gas by ship from a port in Algeria, supplied by the Hassi R'Mel gas field, at the time the third-largest natural gas field in the world; now it is the 18th-largest.
A contract had been signed by the Gas Council for the supply of natural gas for fifteen years from the plant.
The natural gas was transported by two tankers owned by Shell Tankers, taking 700,000 tons per year of natural gas to Essex, to land owned by the North Thames Gas Board in around sixty journeys every six days. This gas provided 10% of Britain's gas needs. Each tanker carried 12,000 tons, enough for a half day of Britain's needs for gas. The journey time to Essex was four days, over 1500 miles. The first gas arrived in Essex on Wednesday 14 October 1964.
This gas was carried by a new £7.5m 200 mile pipeline, the start of the NTS. It provided first natural gas supply in the UK, after a test shipment in February 1959.
In June 1968, the Gas Council planned a similar plant to cost £3.5m in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, to supply a nearby gas terminal, and a gas terminal in Derbyshire.
Supply to France
The first tanker to arrive in France unloaded its gas in March 1965, for Gaz de France.
By 1974, most gas from the site was being supplied to France, to a gas terminal at Fos in the south of France. An agreement was signed in late 1972 to supply gas also to Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and southern Germany, via a gas terminal at Monfalcone in Italy.
Supply to the United States
The first natural gas shipment to the US left on Sunday 30 October 1971. The US had signed a 25-year contract.
Operation
Algeria had been ruled by the French for 132 years, becoming independent in July 1962, only to be taken over by its army in June 1965 by Houari Boumédiène of the Revolutionary Council, who would stay as leader until 1978. The country was known as the Algerian Democratic People's Republic.
On 10 June 1967, Algeria placed an embargo on exports to the UK. On Monday 26 June 1967 the plant ceased operation; the supply to France stopped as well.
The British tankers were allowed again to load from September 1967.
Structure
The site at Bethioua was built in 1964, which was 180 acres. It could process 50 million square feet of natural gas per day. It had three processing structures - two processed gas for the UK, and the other was for France.
See also
Energy in Algeria
List of countries by natural gas production
Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline
References
1964 establishments in Algeria
Algeria–United Kingdom relations
Buildings and structures in Laghouat Province
Commercial buildings completed in 1964
Economic history of Algeria
Energy history of the United Kingdom
Energy infrastructure completed in 1964
Natural gas plants
Natural gas industry in Algeria
Natural gas industry in France
Natural gas industry in the United Kingdom | Arzew Gas Terminal | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,121 | [
"Natural gas technology",
"Natural gas plants"
] |
70,807,222 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah-Marie%20Belcastro | Sarah-Marie Belcastro (aka sarah-marie belcastro, born 1970) is an American mathematician and book author. She is an instructor at the Art of Problem Solving Online School and is the director of MathILy, a residential math summer program hosted at Bryn Mawr. Although her doctoral research was in algebraic geometry, she has also worked extensively in topological graph theory. She is known for and has written extensively about mathematical knitting, and has co-edited three books on fiber mathematics. She herself exclusively uses the form "sarah-marie belcastro".
Biography
Belcastro was born in San Diego, CA in 1970, and grew up mostly in Andover, MA, and in Dubuque, IA. She earned a B.S. (1991) in Mathematics and Astronomy from Haverford College, an M.S. (1993) from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Ph.D. (1997) there for a thesis on “Picard Lattices of Families of K3 Surfaces” done with Igor Dolgachev.
Since 2012, she has also been an instructor at the Art of Problem Solving Online School. Since 2013, she has been the director of Bryn Mawr College's residential summer program MathILy (serious Mathematics Infused with Levity). She is also a guest faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College.
She was Associate Editor for The College Mathematics Journal (2003—2019). She has also lectured frequently at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 2012.
Selected publications
Books
Discrete Mathematics with Ducks (AK Peters, 2012; 2nd ed., CRC Press, 2019, ).
Figuring Fibers, edited by belcastro and Carolyn Yackel, Providence, RI: American Mathematics Society, 2018.
Crafting by Concepts: fiber arts and mathematics, edited by belcastro and Yackel. AK Peters, 2011.
Making Mathematics with Needlework: Ten Papers and Ten Projects, edited by belcastro and Yackel. Wellesley, MA: AK Peters, 2007.
Journal papers
References
External links
Official home page
American women mathematicians
Haverford College alumni
University of Michigan alumni
Geometric topology
American algebraists
Mathematics and art
21st-century American textile artists
American people in knitting
1970 births
Living people | Sarah-Marie Belcastro | [
"Mathematics"
] | 451 | [
"Topology",
"Geometric topology"
] |
70,809,635 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoloma%20prunuloides | Entoloma prunuloides is a species of agaric (gilled mushroom) in the family Entolomataceae. It has been given the recommended English name of Mealy Pinkgill, based on its distinctive smell. The species has a European distribution, occurring mainly in agriculturally unimproved grassland. Threats to its habitat have resulted in the Mealy Pinkgill being assessed as globally "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Taxonomy
The species was first described by Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries in 1821 as Agaricus prunuloides. French mycologist Lucien Quélet transferred it to the genus Entoloma in 1872.
Description
Basidiocarps are agaricoid, up to 80 mm (3 in) tall, the cap convex to flat and broadly umbonate, up to 70 mm (2.75 in) across. The cap surface is smooth, finely fibrillose, cream to ochraceous grey. The lamellae (gills) are white becoming pink from the spores. The stipe (stem) is smooth, finely fibrillose, white, lacking a ring. The spore print is pink, the spores (under a microscope) multi-angled, inamyloid, measuring about 6.5 to 8 by 6.5 to 8 μm. The whole fungus has a distinctive, mealy smell.
Similar species
Entoloma ochreoprunuloides has the same mealy smell but differs in its darker, grey-brown cap.
Distribution and habitat
The Mealy Pinkgill is rare but widespread in Europe. Like many other European pinkgills, it occurs in old, agriculturally unimproved, short-sward grassland (pastures and lawns).
Conservation
Entoloma prunuloides is typical of waxcap grasslands, a declining habitat due to changing agricultural practices. As a result, the species is of global conservation concern and is listed as "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
References
External links
Fungi of Europe
Fungi described in 1821
Entolomataceae
Taxa named by Elias Magnus Fries
Fungus species | Entoloma prunuloides | [
"Biology"
] | 441 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
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