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71,003,169 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan%20Oransky | Ivan Oransky is an American physician, medical researcher and journalist, known for his advocacy of scientific integrity through improved tracking and institutional reforms. His opinions and statistics on scientific misconduct have been described in the media.
Education and career
Oransky received a bachelor's degree at Harvard, where he was executive editor of The Harvard Crimson. He obtained M.D. at the New York University School of Medicine, where he was the editorial director of MedPage Today.
Oransky has been a vice president of editorial at Medscape, executive editor of Reuters Health, managing editor, online, of Scientific American, and deputy editor of The Scientist. From 2017 until 2021, he served as president of the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Oransky co-founded Retraction Watch, a blog reporting scientific retractions, is a writer in residence at New York University's Arthur Carter Journalism Institute, and Editor in Chief of The Transmitter.
Awards
In 2015, Oransky was awarded the John P. McGovern Award for excellence in biomedical communication from the American Medical Writers Association.
Publications and public talks
In 2011, Oransky and Adam Marcus coauthored an article in Nature pointing out that the peer review process for scholarly publications continues long after the publication time. In 2014, Oransky coauthored an article in Nature that described how several authors were caught reviewing their own papers.
In 2012, Oransky gave a talk at TEDMED titled "Are we overmedicalized?".
In 2018, Oransky and Marcus profiled in Science (magazine) two researchers whose investigative work to find inconsistencies in published data has been instrumental in catalyzing retractions.
In August 2023, Oransky and Marcus coauthored op-eds in Scientific American and The Guardian. In the wake of the resignation of Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Orsnsky and Marcus suggested that scientific misconduct is more common than is reported. They also assess that, despite recent scandals involving research misconduct, the academic community is not interested in exposing wrongdoing and scientific errors. However, all members of the academic community are responsible for the delays and lack of action.
References
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
New York University alumni
Harvard University alumni
21st-century American journalists
Scientific misconduct | Ivan Oransky | [
"Technology"
] | 473 | [
"Scientific misconduct",
"Ethics of science and technology"
] |
73,946,621 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoloma%20necopinatum | Entoloma necopinatum is a species of agaric (gilled mushroom) in the family Entolomataceae. The species is currently only known from Chile, occurring in Nothofagus (southern beech) forests. Threats to its habitat have resulted in Entoloma necopinatum being assessed as globally "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Description
Basidiocarps are deep green colored agaricoids, up to 60 mm (2.4 in) tall, the cap convex and umbilicate, up to 40 mm (1.5 in) across. The cap surface is smooth and dry. The lamellae (gills) are greenish becoming greenish pink from the spores. The stipe (stem) is smooth and cap-coloured, lacking a ring. The spore print is pink, the spores (under a microscope) multi-angled, inamyloid, measuring about 8.5 to 10 by 6 to 7 μm.
Conservation
Because of its rarity and threats to its habitat, the species is of global conservation concern and is listed as "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
References
Taxa named by Egon Horak
Entolomataceae
Fungi of South America
Fungi described in 1978
Fungus species | Entoloma necopinatum | [
"Biology"
] | 265 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
73,947,499 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan%20Robertson%20%28scientist%29 | ''For the Australian former rowing coxswain, see Megan Robertson.’'
Megan L. Robertson is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston noted for her work in polymer chemistry towards achieving "green birth, green life, and green death" via recycling and via biosourced oils and fatty acids to develop new elastomers with the aim of replacing petrochemical sources.
Education
Robertson earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley working under the direction of Prof. Nitash Balsara. After working at Rohm and Haas (now Dow Chemical) as a senior scientist for two years, she joined the group of Marc Hillmyer at the University of Minnesota as a postdoctoral research associate.
Career
In 2010 she joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston, and in 2021 she became a full professor. She has received funding from the Department of Defense to investigate chitin-based bulletproof coatings and leads an interdisciplinary team funded through the Welch Foundation to transform polyolefin plastic waste into useful materials. Her most cited work, which was published in Science, is a review on the topic of plastics and recycling. She is an Associate Editor at Macromolecules (journal) and is on the editorial advisory board of the European Polymer Journal. She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology.
Awards and recognition
2014 – NSF CAREER Award
2015 – Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences
2017 – PMSE Young Investigator
2018 – Sparks–Thomas award from the ACS Rubber Division
2022 – Fellow of the American Chemical Society
2023 – National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award
References
Living people
Polymer scientists and engineers
Women materials scientists and engineers
Bioplastics
Biomaterials
Fellows of the American Chemical Society
Year of birth missing (living people)
University of Houston faculty
UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni
McKelvey School of Engineering alumni | Megan Robertson (scientist) | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science",
"Technology",
"Biology"
] | 425 | [
"Biomaterials",
"Women materials scientists and engineers",
"Physical chemists",
"Materials",
"Materials scientists and engineers",
"Polymer chemistry",
"Polymer scientists and engineers",
"Women in science and technology",
"Matter",
"Medical technology"
] |
73,947,765 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal%20of%20Geometry | The Journal of Geometry is a triannual peer-reviewed scientific journal covering geometry, broadly considered. In particular this includes "foundations of geometry, geometric algebra, finite geometries, combinatorial geometry, and special geometries". It was established in 1971 by Walter Benz and is published by Birkhäuser. The editors-in-chief are Hans Havlicek (Technische Universität Wien) and Alexander Kreuzer (Universität Hamburg).
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in EBSCO databases, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Scopus, and zbMATH Open.
References
External links
Geometry journals
Academic journals established in 1971
Triannual journals
English-language journals
Springer Science+Business Media academic journals | Journal of Geometry | [
"Mathematics"
] | 161 | [
"Geometry",
"Geometry journals"
] |
73,948,059 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy%20Bix | Amy Sue Bix is an American historian of science, technology and medicine whose research topics include studies of women and gender, the history of education, and twentieth-century social, cultural, and intellectual history. She is a distinguished professor of history at Iowa State University.
Education and career
Bix grew up in the Chicago area. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Princeton University in 1987, with Sigma Xi honors. At Princeton, she was one of the founders of The Princeton Tory, a conservative student magazine.
In 1994, she earned a Ph.D. in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation, Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs?: America's Debate over Technological Unemployment, 1929-1981, was selected as one of the American Library Association's Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Titles.
Bix has been a history professor at Iowa State University since 1993. In 2007 she became the director of Iowa State's Consortium for the History of Technology and Science. May 2023 she was awarded the title of Distinguished Professor.
Books
Bix's books include:
Girls Coming to Tech!: A History of American Engineering Education for Women (MIT Press, 2013)
The Future is Now: Science and Technology Policy in America Since 1950 (with Alan I. Marcus, Humanity Books, 2007)
Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs?: America's Debate over Technological Unemployment, 1929-1981 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)
Honors and awards
Bix is the recipient of:
The 2022 Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT)
The 2021 Martha Trescott Prize of SHOT
The 2015 Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding and the Advancement of the Engineering Profession of the IEEE
The 2015 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize of the History of Science Society
The 2014 Betty Vetter Award for Research of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN)
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American historians of science
American women historians
Iowa State University faculty
Johns Hopkins University alumni
Princeton University alumni
Science and technology studies scholars | Amy Bix | [
"Technology"
] | 425 | [
"Science and technology studies",
"Science and technology studies scholars"
] |
73,949,101 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy%20%28linguistics%29 | The economy principle in linguistics, also known as linguistic economy, is a functional explanation of linguistic form. It suggests that the organization of phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax is fundamentally based on a compromise between simplicity and clarity, two desirable but to some extent incompatible qualities. The more distinctive elements that a language has, for example, phonemes or functional markers, the more it will promote hearer-easiness. This, however, occurs on the expense of the speaker, who must make a greater effort to convey a message. An economic solution yields good communicative value without excessive time and energy costs.
The word 'economy' derives from Greek oikòs ('house') and nomòs (from némein, 'to deliver'). The notion of good household management is transferred metaphorically from a social to a linguistic level where it represents a force maintaining systemic equilibrium. The same principle—a compromise between gain and cost—also applies to biological systems. However, functional linguistics does not consider itself to be a part of evolutionary biology, but both as belonging to systems theory, and both as being governed by the logic of trade-off. In linguistics, the economy principle suggests that language change cannot make languages exceedingly difficult to produce or process, predicting that the constant changes that are natural to language, despite appearing to have a deteriorating effect, ultimately do not make languages less suited for intercommunication.
Definitions
The standard concept of economy, or, the "classical definition", was published by André Martinet in his Économie des changements phonétiques (1955). Martinet studied the manifestations of economy in phonology and syntax and defined it as the unstable balance between the needs of communication—which are always changing—and natural human inertia, two essential forces contributing to the optimization of the linguistic system.
Previous definitions included the principle of least effort as discussed by Joseph Vendryes (1939) and George Kingsley Zipf (1949). Two contradicting principles of 'economy' were first recognized by Henry Sweet (1888). By contrast, William Dwight Whitney (1875) had discussed linguistic economy before him, but only as relates to the single principle of parsimony. Georg von der Gabelentz (1901) did not use the term but identified two conflicting desiderata in grammar: comfort of the speaker, and clarity, which favors the addressee. Other terms for economy include competing motivations, the homeostatic principle, and the mechanical principle (William Labov). Another similar concept is Martin Haspelmath's form–frequency correspondence, which argues that more frequent forms are unmarked and therefore shorter than the less frequent forms, which are marked and longer. These premises create "a balance between parsimony and clarity", promoting efficiency of communication in terms of production and processing.
Other uses
The word economy has been used in different ways in linguistics and sometimes only refers to parsimony (or notational parsimony, e.g., Louis Hjelmslev). Grammatical efficiency (John A. Hawkins) is another single-principle concept relating to sentence processing; and economy in generative grammar refers simultaneously to notational parsimony and syntactic processing. In John Haiman's competing motivations of economy and iconicity, economy alone is the single principle of parsimony and, thus, distinct from Martinet's economy.
Empirical evidence
A review of studies carried out in diachronic and sociolinguistics found that, while language change is frequently the matter of the deletion of word endings, for example—which often contain grammatical elements—a disambiguation across the linguistic levels is also taking place. Despite being critical of functionalism, Labov considered these two opposing forces as indispensable to explain meaning-preservance in linguistic change. He named three subtypes of meaning-preservation.
Avoidance of homonymy at the lexical-phonological level.
A tendency to increase transparency of derivation; and,
Regularization of paradigms at the morphosyntactic level.
However, Labov points out that meaning-preservation does not necessarily employ push-chains and pull-chains (as it did in the great vowel shift, for instance) and that functional decay is commonplace in language change. Much of the disambiguation occurs indirectly as a reaction to an already occurred change that has increased ambiguity. Children, when learning their language, perform a reanalysis of it based on their experiences of misunderstanding and are inclined to reject the old form that is homonymous with the new form. According to historical linguist Anthony Kroch,"If the progress of an earlier change, like the loss of case marking, leads to a greater tendency for the older form to be misunderstood, no matter how small the tendency, there will be a gradual shift, generation after generation, toward the newer form."This explains, for example, why the loss of grammatical cases did not make English more ambiguous.
Criticism
In the context of a long-lasting descriptivism versus prescriptivism debate, there has been much skepticism of logical and functional arguments, the latter of which are defined as arguments utilizing prescriptive norms “to avoid ambiguity, misunderstanding, redundancy, etc.”. The problem, according to sociolinguists James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, is that non-linguists participating in the social construction of the linguistic norm are not sufficiently informed about the discriminatory aspects of standardization based on such purportedly objective criteria. The evaluation of what is acceptable in language should therefore be left to the professionals, who employ research-based criteria. It is widely accepted among academic linguists that descriptive linguistics is the scientific enterprise that guides educational authorities to the correct policies, resulting in greater social equality.
In theoretical linguistics, Labov is critical of the idea that functional change is based on the speech community's desire to improve their language. Therefore, he proposes renaming the force of maintaining meaning as a "mechanical" principle, reflecting the subconscious nature of language change.
William Croft argues that the whole concept of the functionality of the language system, including economy, is mistaken because language is an autonomous function of the mind and immune to the external factors of communication. According to Croft, the time span of linguistic change is longer than the life of an individual, so he or she cannot be responsible for it. Conversely to Labov, Croft proposes maintaining the term functional explanation but redefining it as an argument against the idea that "form follows function".
See also
Brevity law
Functional linguistics
Diachronic linguistics
Theory of language
References
Cybernetics
Economic theories
Linguistics
Self-organization
Social theories
Systems theory
Theories of language | Economy (linguistics) | [
"Mathematics"
] | 1,371 | [
"Self-organization",
"Dynamical systems"
] |
73,949,649 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%2C2%2C3-Cyclohexatriene | 1,2,3-Cyclohexatriene is an unstable chemical compound with the molecular formula . It is an unusual isomer of benzene in which the three double bonds are cumulated.
This highly strained compound was first prepared in 1990, by reacting a cyclohexadiene derivative with cesium fluoride. The product was too reactive to be isolated on its own, so its existence was confirmed by trapping via a cycloaddition reaction.
1,2,3-Cyclohexatriene and its derivatives undergo a variety of reactions including cycloadditions, nucleophilic additions, and σ-bond insertions, and therefore they can be versatile reagents for organic synthesis.
References
Benzene
Isomerism | 1,2,3-Cyclohexatriene | [
"Chemistry"
] | 162 | [
"Isomerism",
"Stereochemistry"
] |
73,949,761 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain%20extender | In polymer chemistry, a chain extender is a low molecular weight (MW) reagent that converts polymeric precursors to higher molecular weight derivatives. Often, it is convenient to prepare a polymer at an intermediate MW, which are suitable for solution- or melt-processing. At or near the final stages of production, the material is treated with a chain extender. Typically, chain extenders are bifunctional, i.e., they have two functional groups, which can link together two polymers. Representative classes of chain extenders are diglycidyl ethers, diols, diamines, or dianhydrides. Chain extenders are often applied to polyurethanes.
References
Coatings
Elastomers
Plastics | Chain extender | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry"
] | 155 | [
"Synthetic materials",
"Coatings",
"Unsolved problems in physics",
"Elastomers",
"Amorphous solids",
"Plastics"
] |
73,953,144 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skarpa%20Pu%C5%82awska | Skarpa Puławska, also known as Skarpa, and Bielawska-Żywnego, is a residential neighbourhood in the city of Warsaw, Poland, in the district of Mokotów, within the City Information System area of Wierzbno. It is located between Puławska Street, Bielawska Street, Żywnego Street, the peaks of Warsaw Escarpment, and around the Warszawianka sports complex. The neighborhood consists of eight 13-storey multifamily residential large panel system-buildings.
Skarpa Puławska was built between 1965 and 1971. Upon its construction, the buildings of the neighbourhood became the tallest, and one of the first, of the large panel system-buildings in Poland.
Name
The name Skarpa Puławska, translates from Polish to Puławy Escarpment. It refers to the Warsaw Escarpment, at which the neighbourhood was built, and Puławska Street, which forms one of its boundaries, and which was named after the town of Puławy, Poland. The neighbourhood is also sometimes simply known as Skarpa, which means Escarpment. The City Countil of Warsaw refers to the neighbourhood as Bielawska-Żywnego, which refers to Bielawska Street, and Żywnego Street, on which are located most of the buildings in the neighbourhood.
Characteristics
The neighborhood is located between Puławska Street, Bielawska Street, Żywnego Street, the peaks of Warsaw Escarpment, and around the Warszawianka sports complex, within an area of 8 hectares (0.08 km2 or 0.03 sq mi).
The neighborhood consists of eight 13-storey multifamily residential large panel system-buildings, and a technical and administrative building. The residential buildings have around 1500 apartments, and can house between 4,000 and 5,000 people. They total area of apartments is equal of 50,000 m2 (538,195.5 sq ft). The apartments have small balconies.
The addresses of the residential buildings are: 1 Bielawska Street, 109B, and 111 Puławska Street, and 12, 16, 18, 21A, and 23 Żywnego Street. The neighbourhood is administrated by Mokotów Housing Cooperative (Polish: Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa „Mokotów”).
To the east from the neighbourhood are located Arcadia Park, and Arcadia pond.
History
The neighbourhood of was Skarpa Puławska was constructed between 1965 and 1971. The project investor was Starówka Inter-Enterprise Housing Cooperative (Polish: Międzyzakładowa Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa „Starówka”), and it was built by PBM-Mokotów company. According to different sources, the general designer of the neighbourhood was either J. Kulesza, or Tadeusz Stefański.
There were built eight 13-storey multifamily residential large panel system-buildings, and a technical and administrative building, located on Bielawska Street, Puławska Street, and Żywnego Street. They were built in place of the houses originally built in the 19th century to house patients of the hydrotherapy facility operated between 1840 and 1866 by physician Ludwik Sauvan.
The residential buildings were built in the large panel system technology of Warsaw Universal Form (Polish: Warszawska Uniwersalna Forma, WUF). They were based on the 10-storey large panel system-buildings, built previously between 1960 and 1965, in the nearby neighbourhood of Służewiec-Prototypy. Upon their construction, the buildings in Skarpa Puławska were the tallest, and one of the first, of their kind, to be built in Poland. They were designed by Lucjan Adamczyk, Andrzej Bielobradek, Stanisław Dębiński, Władysław Sieradzki, Halina Skarżyńska, Tadeusz Stefański, Eleonora Stolarczyk, Zbigniew Pawłowski, and Jerzy Zoller, from Biuro Projektów Typowych (Standart Projects Bureau), and Studia Budownictwa Miejskiego (Urban Construction Studios). In 1967, for the project, they were awarded the 3rd Degree Award of Minister of Construction.
While designing the buildings, alternative proposition of creating 16-storey buildings instead, was considered, however it was decided against, due to higher costs related to the need of using taller tower cranes.
In the first years of its exploitation, the central heating installation of the neighbourhood, which consisted of a single pipe, turned out to be malfunctioning. The wall insulation of the apartments on the top floors of the buildings, was also untight, and had to be re-insulated.
Notes
References
External links
1965 establishments in Poland
Neighbourhoods of Mokotów
Populated places established in 1965
Prefabricated buildings
Concrete buildings and structures
Planned communities in Poland | Skarpa Puławska | [
"Engineering"
] | 1,063 | [
"Building engineering",
"Prefabricated buildings"
] |
73,954,382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/198%20%28number%29 | 198 (one hundred [and] ninety-eight) is the natural number following 197 and preceding 199.
In mathematics
198 is a companion Pell number. Its corresponding Pell number is 70.
References
Integers | 198 (number) | [
"Mathematics"
] | 43 | [
"Elementary mathematics",
"Integers",
"Mathematical objects",
"Numbers"
] |
73,955,301 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paquier%20Event | The Paquier Event (OAE1b) was an oceanic anoxic event (OAE) that occurred around 111 million years ago (Ma), in the Albian geologic stage, during a climatic interval of Earth's history known as the Middle Cretaceous Hothouse (MKH).
Timeline
OAE1b had three main subevents: the Kilian, Paquier, and Leenhardt. The Kilian subevent was defined by a negative δ13C excursion from about 2-2.5% to 0.5-1.5% followed by a gradual δ13C rise in the Atlantic Ocean, though the magnitude of these carbon isotope fluctuations was higher in areas like the Basque-Cantabrian Basin. The Paquier subevent was the most extreme subevent of OAE1b, exhibiting a δ13C drop of ~3% in marine organic matter and of 1.5-2% in marine carbonate, which was succeeded by a gradual positive δ13C excursion. The Leenhardt subevent was the last OAE1b subevent and is associated in the eastern Tethys Ocean with a negative δ13C excursion of 0.09‰ to -0.48‰ followed by a positive δ13C excursion to 0.58%, although the magnitude of the carbon isotope shifts varies considerably in other marine regions, the negative δ13C excursion being around 1% in the Atlantic and western Tethys but ~4% in the Basque-Cantabrian Basin and ~3% in the Andean Basin.
Causes
Pulsed volcanic activity of the Kerguelen Plateau is suggested to be the cause of OAE1b based on mercury anomalies recorded from this interval. Five different mercury anomalies relative to total organic carbon are known from strata from the Jiuquan Basin spanning the OAE1b interval, strongly supporting a causal relationship with massive volcanism. Prominent negative osmium isotope excursions coeval with biotic changes among planktonic foraminifera further confirm the occurrence of multiple episodes of submarine volcanic activity over the course of OAE1b. Nonetheless, volcanism is not unequivocally supported as OAE1b's mainspring. Mercury anomalies associated with OAE1b have been interpreted by some to reflect mineralisation associated with salt diapirism instead of volcanism. Another line of evidence contradicting the volcanism hypothesis involves the massive diachrony between thallium isotope records and intervals of deoxygenation.
Global warming intensified chemical weathering, leading to increased terrestrial inputs of organic matter into oceans and lakes. This promoted eutrophication that rapidly depleted bodies of water of dissolved oxygen. A contemporary increase in 187Os/188Os reflects an increase in continentally derived, radiogenic osmium sources in the ocean, confirming an increase in terrestrial runoff.
Alternatively, rather than volcanism, some research points to orbital cycles as the governing cause of OAE1b. It has been hypothesised that enhanced monsoonal activity modulated by Earth's axial precession drove the development of OAE1b. Evidence supporting this explanation includes regular variations in detrital and weathering indices between humid intervals of high weathering and anoxia and drier intervals of decreased weathering and better oxygenated waters; these variations are suggested to correspond to precession cycles. A different analysis of orbital forcing purports the long eccentricity cycle as the most significant orbital driver of monsoonal modulation. δ18O records in planktic foraminifera from the Boreal Ocean show a 100 kyr periodicity, indicating that the short eccentricity cycle governed the ingression of hot Tethyan waters into the Boreal Ocean and consequent Boreal warming. The 405 kyr eccentricity cycle appears to have dominated the advance and retreat of anoxia in the Vocontian Basin.
The tectonic isolation of the Atlantic and Tethys Oceans restricted their ventilation, enabling their stagnation and facilitating ideal conditions for thermohaline stratification, which would in turn promote the widespread development of anoxia during a speedily warming climate.
OAE1b's coincidence with a peak in a 5-6 Myr oscillation in marine phosphorus accumulation suggests that enhanced phosphorus regeneration may have been one of the causal factors behind the development of widespread anoxia. As more phosphorus built up in marine environments and caused spikes in biological productivity and decreases in dissolved oxygen, it caused a strong positive feedback loop in which phosphorus deposited on the seafloor was recycled back into the water column at faster rates, facilitating further increase in productivity and decrease in seawater oxygen content. Eventually, a negative feedback loop of increased atmospheric oxygen terminated this phosphorus spike and the OAE itself by causing increased wildfire activity and a consequent decline in vegetation and chemical weathering.
Effects
Unlike other OAEs during the MKH, such as the OAE1a and the OAE2, OAE1b was not associated with an extinction event of benthic foraminifera. Identical benthic foraminiferal assemblages occur both below and above the black shales deposited in association with OAE1b, indicating that this OAE was limited in its geographic and bathymetric extent. Although some parts of the ocean floor became devoid of life, benthic foraminifera survived in refugia and recolonised previously abandoned areas after the OAE with no faunal turnover. Planktonic foraminifera, however, significantly declined during OAE1b. In the eastern Pacific, the Paquier Level of OAE1b is associated with the demise of heterozoan-dominated carbonate production.
As with other OAEs, OAE1b left its mark on the geologic record in the form of widespread and abundant deposition of black shales.
See also
Jenkyns Event
Selli Event
Breistroffer Event
Bonarelli Event
References
Albian Stage
Anoxic events | Paquier Event | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,248 | [
"Chemical oceanography",
"Anoxic events"
] |
73,956,713 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby%20Tower | A baby tower, also known as an abandoned infant tower or baby girl tower, is an architectural structure found in various places in ancient China. They would typically take the form of a small stone or brick tower with an opening on the top. Dead, disabled, female, and unwanted infants could be thrown inside and abandoned. The baby tower is described as a donation from wealthy people in the countryside, as a more humane alternative to drowning babies in a river, common at the time. The pagoda architectural style is intended to suppress the spirit of the children, to prevent them from being reincarnated.
Gender selection of children in China has been an issue for a long time due to the undesirability of female children in the Chinese patriarchal society, and the perception of male children as being more valuable for work, especially among peasants.
See also
Sex-ratio imbalance in China
Sex-selective abortion
Female infanticide in China
References
Works cited
Superstitions of China
Sex selection in China
Sexism in China
Violence against women in China
Crime in China
Female infanticide | Baby Tower | [
"Biology"
] | 214 | [] |
73,959,740 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elio%20Morillo | Elio Morillo Baquerizo is an Ecuadorian-Boricua aerospace engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Morillo won the SHPE-EL Poder en Ti Scholarship while attending the University of Michigan, pursuing this degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Morillo is known for his work on the Mars 2020 program named Perseverance. The Perseverance was the fifth rover sent to Mars after Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity. The mission for Mars 2020 was the first mission that was able to collect rocks and small fragments, dust and sand from the surface.
Education
Morillo pursued his academic journey at University of Michigan, where he successfully obtained a degree in mechanical engineering. Motivated by his passion for space exploration, he continued his education at the same university and earned a master's degree specializing in space systems design. His dedication and hard work were recognized during his time at University of Michigan when he was awarded the SHPE-EL Poder en Ti Scholarship.
Career
Morillo embarked on his NASA career in 2016, initially joining as a young engineer working on the Mars 2020 System test bed. His dedication and expertise led to his promotion as the Mars 2020 Engineering Operations Mechanisms Lead. As his career progressed, Morillo was further elevated to the esteemed position of Operations Mechanisms Chair. During this time, he played a pivotal role in the Mars 2020 Ingenuity Helicopter project, serving as the Operator.
Morillo's contributions to the Mars 2020 program have been widely recognized. Under his guidance, the mission successfully deployed the Perseverance rover, which embarked on a seven-month journey to Mars. On February 18, the rover achieved a safe landing, marking a significant milestone as the most substantial and advanced vehicle ever sent to another planet. The Perseverance joined the ranks of previous successful Mars rovers, including Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity.
The primary objective of the Mars 2020 mission was to collect rocks, small fragments, dust, and sand from the Martian surface. Equipped with a robotic arm, the rover could analyze samples immediately upon contact. Notably, the Perseverance also featured an instrument called MOXIE, which stands for "Mars Oxygen In Situ Experiment." This innovative device demonstrated the capability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen on the Red Planet.
References
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Aerospace engineers
University of Michigan alumni
NASA people
Mechanical engineers
Ecuadorian engineers
Hispanic and Latino American scientists | Elio Morillo | [
"Engineering"
] | 496 | [
"Mechanical engineers",
"Mechanical engineering",
"Aerospace engineers",
"Aerospace engineering"
] |
73,960,331 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethenedithione | Ethenedithione or ethylenedithone is an unstable chemical substance with formula S=C=C=S made from carbon and sulfur.
Ethenedithione can exist as a gas at low pressure and high temperature, but is unstable when condensed or under higher pressure.
It can be stabilized as a ligand binding two cobalt atoms.
Other occurrences as a ligand are in TpW(CO)2(C2S2)– and [TpW(CO)2]2Ni(C2S2)2, where Tp is trispyrazolylborate.
Formation
Ethenedithione can be made by the flash vacuum pyrolysis of 2,5-Dithiacyclopentylideneketene.
Also it has been made by dissociative ionization of tetrathiapentalenedione, and then neutralisation of ions produced.
C2S2 is made along with carbon subsulfide and carbon monosulfide, in an electric discharge in carbon disulfide vapour.
Properties
In its ground state it is a triplet state (3Σg−). Ethenedithione can be trapped in a matrix of solid argon without decomposition.
The infrared spectrum contains a prominent line at 1179.3 cm−1 due to asymmetric C=S stretch of the most common isotopes.
Over 60K, ethenedithione polymerises. Possible polymerisation products include polythiene.
References
Heterocumulenes
Ketenes
Thioketones | Ethenedithione | [
"Chemistry"
] | 320 | [
"Functional groups",
"Thioketones",
"Ketenes"
] |
73,960,946 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retiperidiolia | Retiperidiolia is a genus of fungi in the family Nidulariaceae. Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are typically under 10 mm in diameter and irregularly spherical. Each produces a number of peridioles which contain the spores and are released from the disintegrating fruit bodies at maturity. Species are usually found growing on herbaceous stems and other plant debris. The genus has a tropical distribution. Species were previously referred to Mycocalia, but molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, found that they were not closely related.
See also
List of Agaricales genera
References
Nidulariaceae
Agaricales genera
Taxa described in 2022
Fungi | Retiperidiolia | [
"Biology"
] | 144 | [
"Fungi"
] |
65,383,852 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%20Clem | Mary A. Clem (née Mary A. McLaughlin; 19051979) was an American mathematician, and a human computer. She was a staff member at Iowa State University, and was recognized for inventing the “zero check” technique for detecting errors.
Biography
Clem was born on October 19, 1905 in the small town of Nevada, in Story County, central Iowa. She completed her high school degree and found employment for several years with the Iowa State Highway Commission and Iowa State College as a computing clerk, auditing clerk, and bookkeeper.
In 1931, she joined the Mathematics Statistical Service of the Mathematics Department of Iowa State College to work as a human computer under the supervision of George Snedecor. Although she complained that mathematics was her poorest subject in high school, she was fascinated with figures and data. Most of her work was done via punch cards, both creating formulas and cards, and running accuracy checks on them. She invented the “zero check” while working in Snedecor’s lab. The “zero check” is a sum that should equal zero if all other numbers had been correctly calculated. These sums helped check for errors in computing algorithms. Clem expressed that her lack of training as a mathematician is what made her notice these sums, as they had often been overlooked by others. In 1940, Clem was advanced to be technician and chief statistical clerk in charge of the Computing Service of the Statistical Laboratory. In 1962, she transferred to the new Computation Center at Iowa State University.
Clem went on the 2nd Allied Mission to Greece in 1946 as a junior statistician, and there she observed the elections. In 1952, she was a statistical consultant to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima, Japan.
Publications
Homeyer, Paul G.; Clem, Mary A.; and Federer, Walter T. (1947) "Punched card and calculating machine methods for analyzing lattice experiments including lattice squares and the cubic lattice," Research Bulletin (Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station): Vol. 28 : No. 347, Article 1.
See also
Timeline of women in computing
References
Further reading
Clem, Mary (June 27, 1969). “Interview with Mary Clem by Uta Merzbach”, Smithsonian.
“Mary Clem,” Iowa State University Faculty Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 20. February 2, 1979.
1905 births
1979 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
Human computers
Iowa State University people
Mathematicians from Iowa
20th-century American women mathematicians
People from Nevada, Iowa | Mary Clem | [
"Technology"
] | 512 | [
"Human computers",
"History of computing"
] |
65,387,845 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C6H4N2S | {{DISPLAYTITLE:C6H4N2S}}
The molecular formula C6H4N2S may refer to:
1,2,3-Benzothiadiazole, a benzene ring that is fused to a 1,2,3-thiadiazole
2,1,3-Benzothiadiazole, a benzene ring that is fused to a 1,2,5-thiadiazole | C6H4N2S | [
"Chemistry"
] | 97 | [
"Isomerism",
"Set index articles on molecular formulas"
] |
65,387,994 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind%20generated%20current | A Wind generated current is a flow in a body of water that is generated by wind friction on its surface. Wind can generate surface currents on water bodies of any size. The depth and strength of the current depend on the wind strength and duration, and on friction and viscosity losses, but are limited to about 400 m depth by the mechanism, and to lesser depths where the water is shallower. The direction of flow is influenced by the Coriolis effect, and is offset to the right of the wind direction in the Northern Hemisphere, and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. A wind current can induce secondary water flow in the form of upwelling and downwelling, geostrophic flow, and western boundary currents.
Mechanism
Friction between wind and the upper surface of a body of water will drag the water surface along with the wind The surface layer will exert viscous drag on the water just below, which will transfer some of the momentum. This process continues downward, with a continuous reduction in speed of flow with increasing depth as the energy is dissipated. The inertial effect of planetary rotation causes an offset of flow direction with increasing depth to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. The mechanism of deflection is called the Coriolis effect, and the variation of flow velocity with depth is called an Ekman spiral. The effect varies with latitude, being very weak at the equator and increasing in strength with latitude. The resultant flow of water caused by this mechanism is known as Ekman transport.
A steady wind blowing across a long fetch in deep water for long enough to establish a steady state flow causes the surface water to move at 45° to the wind direction. The variation in flow direction with depth has the water moving perpendicular to wind direction by about 100 to 150 m depth, and flow speed drops to about 4% of surface flow speed by the depth of about 330 to 400 m where the flow direction is opposite to wind direction, below which the effect of wind on the current is considered negligible. The net flow of water over the effective thickness of the current in these conditions is perpendicular to wind direction. Consistent prevailing winds set up persistent circulating surface currents in both hemispheres, and where the current is bounded by continental land masses, the resulting gyres are restricted in longitudinal extent. Seasonal and local winds cause smaller scale and generally transient currents, which dissipate after the driving winds die down.
Real conditions often differ, as wind strength and direction vary, and the depth may not be sufficient for the full spiral to develop, so that the angle between wind direction and surface-water movement can be as small as 15°. In deeper water, the angle increases and approaches 45°. A stable pycnocline can inhibit transfer of kinetic energy to deeper waters, providing a depth limit for surface currents.
The net inward shallow water flow in a gyre causes the surface level to gradually slope upwards towards the centre. This induces a horizontal pressure gradient which leads to a balancing geostrophic flow.
Boundary currents
Boundary currents are ocean currents with dynamics determined by the presence of a coastline, and fall into two distinct categories:
Eastern boundary currents are relatively shallow, broad and slow-flowing currents on the eastern side of oceanic basins along the western coasts of continents. Subtropical eastern boundary currents flow equatorward, transporting cold water from higher latitudes to lower latitudes; examples include the Benguela Current, the Canary Current, the Humboldt Current, and the California Current. Coastal upwelling caused by offshore flow due to Ekman transport where the prevailing wind parallels the shoreline brings nutrient-rich water into eastern boundary current regions, making them highly productive areas.
Western boundary currents are warm, deep, narrow, and fast flowing currents that form on the west side of ocean basins due to western intensification. They carry warm water from the tropics poleward. Examples include the Gulf Stream, the Agulhas Current, and the Kuroshio.
Western intensification is an effect on the western arm of an oceanic current, particularly a large gyre in an ocean basin. The trade winds blow westward in the tropics. The westerlies blow eastward at mid-latitudes. This applies a stress to the ocean surface with a curl in north and south hemispheres, causing Sverdrup transport toward the tropics. Conservation of mass and potential vorticity cause that transport to be balanced by a narrow, intense poleward current, which flows along the western coast, allowing the vorticity introduced by coastal friction to balance the vorticity input of the wind. The reverse effect applies to the polar gyres – the sign of the wind stress curl and the direction of the resulting currents are reversed.
The principal west side currents (such as the Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic Ocean) are stronger than those opposite (such as the California Current of the North Pacific Ocean).
Wind driven upwelling
When the net Ekman transport along a coastline is offshore, a compensatory inflow is possible from below, which brings up bottom water, which tends to be nutrient rich as it comes from the poorly lit regions where photosynthesis is insignificant.
Upwelling at the equator is associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) which moves seasonally, and consequently, is often located just north or south of the equator. Easterly trade winds blow from the Northeast and Southeast and converge along the equator blowing West to form the ITCZ. Although there are no Coriolis forces present along the equator, upwelling still occurs just north and south of the equator. This results in a divergence, with denser, nutrient-rich water being upwelled from below.
Oceanic downwelling
Downwelling occurs at anti-cyclonic places of the ocean where warm core rings cause surface convergence and push the surface water downwards, or wind drives the sea towards a coastline. Regions that have downwelling generally have lower productivity because the nutrients in the water column are utilized but are not resupplied by nutrient-rich water from deeper below the surface.
Oceanic wind driven currents
Western boundary
Eastern boundary
Equatorial
Arctic
Atlantic
Pacific
Southern
Oceanic gyres
Lake currents
Local and transient currents
Surface currents caused by local wind
Upwellings driven by local and prevailing winds.
See also
References
Currents
Oceanographical terminology
Physical oceanography | Wind generated current | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry"
] | 1,296 | [
"Ocean currents",
"Applied and interdisciplinary physics",
"Physical oceanography",
"Fluid dynamics"
] |
65,388,590 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane%20Endicott | Professor Jane Endicott has been a Professor of Cancer Structural Biology at Newcastle University's Faculty of Medical Sciences and a member of the Cancer Research UK Newcastle Drug Discovery Unit since October 2011. She is also a member of the Newcastle University Cancer Leads Group and the Newcastle University Centre for Cancer Fellowships Steering Group, as well as a Emeritus Fellow at St Cross College, University of Oxford.
Education and career
After studying Biochemistry at Corpus Christi College, the University of Oxford, Endicott completed her PhD at the Ontario Cancer Institute, as part of the laboratory team of Victor Ling. In 1991, she joined the laboratories of Paul Nurse and Louise Johnson at the University of Oxford, as a Junior Research Fellow of the National Cancer Institute of Canada, to conduct research into cyclin-dependent protein kinases (CDKs).
She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 1995, and has a Lectureship at Trinity College, University of Oxford.
Research
Endicott's specialises in cell cycle structural biology and transcription. Her group studies how proteins involved in transcription and other cell cycle processes interact with each other, and whether blocking some of these connections could treat cancer. The lab also works with the Cancer Research UK Newcastle Drug Discovery Unit projects.
Awards
Endicott was awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) Suffrage Science Award in 2014 for her scientific achievements.
Publications
PubMed lists over 65 publication listings for Endicott, the most cited are: ,
Endicott JA, Ling V. The biochemistry of P-glycoprotein-mediated multidrug resistance. Annual Review of Biochemistry. 1989 Jul;58(1):137-71. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited 2555 times >
Noble ME, Endicott JA, Johnson LN. Protein kinase inhibitors: insights into drug design from structure. Science. 2004 Mar 19;303(5665):1800-5. According to Google Scholar , it has been cited 1458 times.
Hoessel R, Leclerc S, Endicott JA, Nobel ME, Lawrie A, Tunnah P, Leost M, Damiens E, Marie D, Marko D, Niederberger E. Indirubin, the active constituent of a Chinese antileukaemia medicine, inhibits cyclin-dependent kinases. Nature cell biology. 1999 May;1(1):60-7. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited 910 times
Gerlach JH, Endicott JA, Juranka PF, Henderson G, Sarangi F, Deuchars KL, Ling V. Homology between P-glycoprotein and a bacterial haemolysin transport protein suggests a model for multidrug resistance. Nature. 1986 Dec;324(6096):485-9. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited 741 times
Some of the most recent are:
Structural insights into the functional diversity of the CDK-cyclin family. Wood DJ, Endicott JA. Open Biology 2018 Sep;8(9):180112. doi: 10.1098/rsob.180112. PMID 30185601 Free PMC article. Review.
CDK1 structures reveal conserved and unique features of the essential cell cycle CDK. Brown NR, Korolchuk S, Martin MP, Stanley WA, Moukhametzianov R, Noble MEM, Endicott JA. Nature Communications. 2015 Apr 13;6:6769. doi: 10.1038/ncomms7769. PMID 25864384 Free PMC article.
Identification of a novel orally bioavailable ERK5 inhibitor with selectivity over p38α and BRD4. Myers SM, Miller DC, Molyneux L, Arasta M, Bawn RH, Blackburn TJ, Cook SJ, Edwards N, Endicott JA, Golding BT, Griffin RJ, Hammonds T, Hardcastle IR, Harnor SJ, Heptinstall AB, Lochhead PA, Martin MP, Martin NC, Newell DR, Owen PJ, Pang LC, Reuillon T, Rigoreau LJM, Thomas HD, Tucker JA, Wang LZ, Wong AC, Noble MEM, Wedge SR, Cano C. European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 2019 Sep 15;178:530-543. doi: 10.1016/j.ejmech.2019.05.057. Epub 2019 May 25. PMID 31212132
Structure-based discovery of cyclin-dependent protein kinase inhibitors. Martin MP, Endicott JA, Noble MEM. Essays in Biochemistry. 2017 Nov 8;61(5):439-452. doi: 10.1042/EBC20170040. Print 2017 Nov 8. PMID 29118092 Free PMC article. Review. \
References
External links
Living people
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
Structural biologists
British women biologists
20th-century British biologists
21st-century British biologists | Jane Endicott | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,068 | [
"Structural biologists",
"Structural biology"
] |
65,394,145 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division%20lattice | The division lattice is an infinite complete bounded distributive lattice whose elements are the natural numbers ordered by divisibility. Its least element is 1, which divides all natural numbers, while its greatest element is 0, which is divisible by all natural numbers. The meet operation is greatest common divisor while the join operation is least common multiple.
The prime numbers are precisely the atoms of the division lattice, namely those natural numbers divisible only by themselves and 1.
For any square-free number n, its divisors form a Boolean algebra that is a sublattice of the division lattice. The elements of this sublattice are representable as the subsets of the set of prime factors of n.
References
Lattice theory
Boolean algebra
Prime numbers | Division lattice | [
"Mathematics"
] | 161 | [
"Boolean algebra",
"Lattice theory",
"Prime numbers",
"Mathematical logic",
"Mathematical objects",
"Fields of abstract algebra",
"Order theory",
"Numbers",
"Number theory"
] |
65,394,610 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meliola%20evansii | Meliola evansii is a fungus in the family Meliolaceae. It has been seen in Mozambique, South Africa, and the Cook Islands. It has been recorded to be hosted by Maytenus acuminata.
References
Meliolaceae
Fungus species | Meliola evansii | [
"Biology"
] | 54 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,096 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20australiensis | Backusella australiensis is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to Australia, the country from which the type specimen was collected. The type locality is Morwell National Park.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Fungi described in 2020
Zygomycota
Fungus species | Backusella australiensis | [
"Biology"
] | 89 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,123 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20dispersa | Backusella dispersa is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was originally described in 1910 by Hagem as Mucor dispersus, but in 2020 it was combined by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch into the genus Backusella, making the new combination B. dispersa.
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 1910
Fungus species | Backusella dispersa | [
"Biology"
] | 92 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,135 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20liffmaniae | Backusella liffmaniae is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet is in honour of Patricia Liffman, who contributed to the protection of ex-type locality. The type locality is Jack Cann Reserve, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella liffmaniae | [
"Biology"
] | 98 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,148 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20luteola | Backusella luteola is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to the yellow colony colouration. The type locality is Jack Cann Reserve, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella luteola | [
"Biology"
] | 85 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,149 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20macrospora | Backusella macrospora is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to the large size of the sporangiospores. The type locality is Tarra-Bulga National Park, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella macrospora | [
"Biology"
] | 93 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,152 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20mclennaniae | Backusella mclennaniae is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet is in honour of Australian mycologist Ethel Irene McLennan. The type locality is Morwell National Park, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella mclennaniae | [
"Biology"
] | 92 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,157 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20morwellensis | Backusella morwellensis is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to the type locality; Morwell National Park, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella morwellensis | [
"Biology"
] | 79 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,158 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20parvicylindrica | Backusella parvicylindrica is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet is from Latin parvus (small) and Greek kylindros (cylinder), referring to the sporangiospore dimensions. The type locality is Jack Cann Reserve, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella parvicylindrica | [
"Biology"
] | 106 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,160 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20psychrophila | Backusella psychrophila is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to the inability of this species to grow above 30 ˚C. The type locality is Jack Cann Reserve, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella psychrophila | [
"Biology"
] | 91 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,161 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20tarrabulga | Backusella tarrabulga is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet refers to the type locality; Tarra-Bulga National Park, Australia.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella tarrabulga | [
"Biology"
] | 83 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,396,162 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backusella%20westeae | Backusella westeae is a species of zygote fungus in the order Mucorales. It was described by Andrew S. Urquhart and James K. Douch in 2020. The specific epithet is in honour of mycologist Gretna Margaret Weste. The type locality is Tarra-Bulga National Park, Australia, from which the type specimen was inadvertently isolated from a Laccaria basidiome.
See also
Fungi of Australia
References
External links
Zygomycota
Fungi described in 2020
Fungus species | Backusella westeae | [
"Biology"
] | 111 | [
"Fungi",
"Fungus species"
] |
65,398,411 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perivitellins | Perivitellins are egg proteins found in the perivitelline fluid of many gastropods. They are multifunctional complexes providing the developing embryo with nutrition, protection from the environment, and defense against predators.
Despite the central role perivitellins play in reproduction and development, there is little information about their role in gastropod Molluscs. Most studies of perivitellins have been performed in eggs of Ampullaridae, a family of freshwater snails (Caenogastropoda), notably the Pomacea genus, mostly those of Pomacea canaliculata, Pomacea scalaris and Pomacea maculata.
Synthesis
Perivitellins are almost exclusively synthesized in the albumen gland (also known as albumen gland-capsule gland complex or uterine gland), an accessory gland from the female reproductive system of gastropods. This has been experimentally confirmed for the perivitellins ovorubin (PcOvo) and PcPV2, which were only found in the albumen gland with no extra-gland synthesis, circulation or storage. During the reproductive season, these perivitellins are transferred to eggs. After oviposition, they are rapidly restored in the albumen gland, decreasing their total amount in the gland only after repeated ovipositions. In Pomacea canaliculata snails, perivitellins would act, together with the polysaccharide galactogen, as a limiting factor of the reproductive effort during reproduction.
Types of perivitellins
The first studies performed in Pomacea canaliculata identified two proteins named perivitellin-1, PV1 or ovorubin (now called PcOvo) and perivitellin-2 or PV2 massively accumulated in eggs, comprising 60-70% of total protein, respectively, and a heterogeneous fraction dubbed perivitellin-3 or PV3 fraction. Recent proteomic analyses of perivitelline fluids, however, identified a total of 34 proteins from Pomacea canaliculata, 38 in Pomacea maculata, and 32 in Pomacea diffusa.
Perivitellin-1 or PcOvo (former ovorubin) and perivitellin-2 or PcPV2 are probably the best characterized from snails. Both perivitellins are multimeric and glycosylated proteins with remarkable thermal stability up to 100°C and 60°C, respectively, and over a wide range of pH. They are also highly resistant to the combined action of pepsin and trypsin proteases.
The perivitelline fluid of Pomacea scalaris and Pomacea diffusa contain one major perivitellin, PsSC (also named scalarin) and PdPV1, respectively, which are structurally and phylogenetically related to PcOvo. The perivitelline fluid of P. maculata is also similar, with two major perivitellins, PmPV1 and PmPV2, structurally and functionally similar to PcOvo and PcPV2, respectively.
The rest of Pomacea perivitellins (over 25) have been characterized at the transcriptomic and proteomic levels, but biochemical studies are still largely missing.
Perivitellin functions
Perivitellins provide nutrition, energy storage, defense against predation, and protection from the environment to the developing embryo.
A functional classification of the perivitellin aminoacid sequences based on the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), classified them in "environmental information processing", among which several immune proteins are included, "metabolism", "organismal systems", "cellular processes", "other", and a considerable number of "unknown" proteins.
The first functional studies performed in Pomacea canaliculata, considered them mostly as storage proteins that provided energetic and structural precursors for the embryos, since they are consumed during development.
Later research on PV1s (PcOvo, PmPV1, and PsSC) reported that their carotenoid cofactor, notably astaxanthin, serves as a potent antioxidant and provides the reddish color to the eggs. These carotenoproteins are also highly resistant to gastrointestinal digestion, and withstand the passage through the digestive system without significant modifications; this characteristic was related to embryo defenses, deterring predators by lowering the nutritional value of the eggs. PcOvo and PsSC also carry phosphate groups attached to serine residues that may serve as a phosphorus reserve for the embryo. Unlike PcOvo and PmPV1, PsSC is also an active lectin that agglutinates bacteria and alters the gastrointestinal mucosa of rats, functions associated with embryo protection against both pathogens and predators.
PV2s are toxins only found in Pomacea canaliculata (PcPV2) and Pomacea maculata (PmPV2) perivitelline fluid. They are potent neurotoxins when intraperitoneally injected to mice, while exerting enterotoxic functions when ingested. Each of the two dimeric units of either PcPV2 or PmPV2 consists of a carbohydrate-binding protein of the tachylectin family (acting as a targeting module) disulfide-linked to a pore-forming subunit of the Membrane Attack Complex and Perforin (MACPF) subfamily (toxic module). These toxins bear a structural resemblance to botulinic and ricin heterodimeric toxins, the so-called "AB toxins" previously known only in bacteria and plants. Perivitellin-2 is also resistant to gastrointestinal digestion, which contributes to lowering the egg nutritional value.
Finally, a recent study of Pomacea canaliculata PV3 fraction identified and characterized two protease inhibitors from the Kunitz and Kazal families, a function also related to an antipredator defense since it would prevent predators to digest proteins from the eggs when ingested.
References
Gastropod anatomy
Proteins | Perivitellins | [
"Chemistry"
] | 1,274 | [
"Biomolecules by chemical classification",
"Proteins",
"Molecular biology"
] |
68,159,805 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISE%201534%E2%80%931043 | WISE 1534–1043 (or WISEA J153429.75-104303.3, and referred to as "The Accident") is a brown dwarf (substellar object), Class Y, the coolest class, visible only in the infrared. It was accidentally discovered via the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.
The brown dwarf is 50 light years from Earth, with a transverse velocity of over 200 km/s – over 25% faster than the next fastest stellar object of its kind. Its relative color components are unique among brown dwarfs observed to date. The best guess as to its origins are that it is a very old and low-metallicity object. On the 245th meeting of the AAS it was announced that JWST confirmed the object as a brown dwarf.
Discovery
WISE 1534-1043 was first noticed by Dan Caselden, a security engineer and citizen scientist of the Backyard Worlds Zooniverse project. He built his own online program to find brown dwarfs and found this source by accident, while looking at another source. It was first announced as a brown dwarf by the CatWISE team, who used Spitzer Space Telescope for follow-up observations. It had the highest proper motion in this sample and was undetected in Palomar/WIRC. This already hinted at the subdwarf nature of this object. Subsequent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 and Keck MOSFIRE uncovered the faintness of the source in the J-band. By combining Spitzer and Hubble data, a robust parallax was measured, establishing it as a possible subdwarf of type Y.
Properties
The parallax measurement for WISE 1534–1043 showed a distance of 16 parsec, resulting in a faint absolute ch2 magnitude and therefore a low temperature. New spectroscopic models for metal-poor brown dwarfs, resulted in a temperature lower than 500 K (<227 °C), making WISE 1534–1043 a Y-dwarf.
The moderate red Spitzer ch1-ch2 color in WISE 1534–1043 is likely caused by methane in the atmosphere. Methane absorbs around the wavelength of 3.6 μm, corresponding to the W1 (WISE) and ch1 (Spitzer) bands, causing a red color for T and Y-dwarfs. Other late T- and Y-dwarfs show a much redder ch1-ch2 color when compared to WISE 1534–1043. The low amount of carbon in WISE 1534–1043 causes the atmosphere to contain less methane and explains the moderate red ch1-ch2 color.
The red J-W2 color is caused by a faint J-band magnitude. A likely cause for the faint J-band in metal-poor T/Y-dwarfs is collision-induced absorption of hydrogen molecules, which is enhanced in metal-poor brown dwarfs and broadly absorbs in the near-infrared. Additional evidence hint to a peculiar Y/J-band spectrum for WISE 1534–1043.
The metal-poor scenario fits with the high tangential velocity of about 200 km/s. Metal-poor objects belong to older stellar population, which are in a different orbit around the galactic center compared to the sun. WISE 1534–1043 has such a high velocity that it is suggested to be a halo member.
A pre-print paper from January 2023 describes the first J-band magnitude measurement of WISE 1534–1043, taken with Flamingos-2 at Gemini South. The previous J-band magnitude was estimated from a Hubble F110W measurement.
Based on the model tracks and associated iso-temperature the most consistent temperature is between about 400 K and 550 K, while the most consistent metallicity is . The metallicity could be significantly lower and especially the extreme red J-W2 color suggests it could be cold even for a Y-dwarf. The researchers are not able to determine the Y-dwarf status of WISE 1534–1043 with absolute certainty, due to the T/Y-dwarf transition occurring at about 485 K. The researchers suggest that JWST spectroscopy is needed to determine the detailed physical properties of this object. JWST observations were approved for cylcle 2 with NIRSpec and MIRI.
In the spectrum of WISE 1534–1043 researchers made the first detection of silane (SiH4) in the atmosphere of a substellar object. The publication concerning this discovery is in review.
WISE 1534–1043 has the bluest F110W-J color available for late T and Y-dwarfs.
Disproven alternative explanations
Previous alternative explanations included an extremely low-mass and young brown dwarf. This scenario cannot explain the high velocity, as young objects usually show a low tangential velocity.
Another alternative was an ejected exoplanet. Even for a young and recently ejected exoplanet, models predicted a mass of about 0.3 . Microlensing surveys have shown that ejected exoplanets with such high masses are extremely rare and it is unlikely to find any in the neighbourhood of the Sun.
An ultra-cold stellar remnant cannot fully explain the colors of WISE 1534–1043. It would also require a white dwarf that is older than the Milky Way or an exotic scenario in which the white dwarf got stripped to its bare core by a source and then ripped from its ablating source. Finding such an source near the Sun is highly improbable.
All these explanations were disproven after JWST observations in 2025, which confirmed it as a metal-poor brown dwarf.
See also
List of star systems within 50–55 light-years
List of Y-dwarfs
Notes
Reference
External links
Anton Petrov Accidental Discovery of a Brown Dwarf With Very Strange Features (YouTube video)
Susanna Kohler Observing “The Accident”, an Enigmatic Brown Dwarf (Research highlights from the journals of the American Astronomical Society)
WISE objects
Y-type brown dwarfs
Brown dwarfs
Subdwarfs
Astronomical objects discovered in 2021
Libra (constellation) | WISE 1534–1043 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 1,239 | [
"Libra (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
68,161,008 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline%20vaccine | Pipeline vaccine refers to vaccines which are under development. The World Health Organization's (WHO) Product Development for Vaccines Advisory Committee oversees the development of pipeline vaccines.
Examples
The WHO updates a list of diseases for which vaccine development is in pipeline. As of July 2021, the pipeline vaccines for the following diseases are under development.
Campylobacter jejuni
Chagas Disease
Chikungunya
Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli
Enterovirus 71 (EV71)
Group B Streptococcus (GBS)
Herpes Simplex Virus
HIV-1
Human Hookworm Disease
Leishmaniasis
Malaria
Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Nipah virus infection
Nontyphoidal Salmonella Disease
Norovirus
Paratyphoid fever
Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)
Schistosomiasis
Shigella
Staphylococcus aureus
Streptococcus pneumoniae
Streptococcus pyogenes
Tuberculosis
Universal influenza vaccine
References
Vaccines | Pipeline vaccine | [
"Biology"
] | 204 | [
"Vaccination",
"Vaccines"
] |
68,166,066 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Matula | David William Matula (born 1937) is an American mathematician and computer scientist known for his research on graph theory, graph algorithms, computer arithmetic, and algorithm engineering. He is a professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University, where he formerly held the Cruse C. and Marjorie F. Calahan Centennial Chair in Engineering.
Education and career
Matula was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 1959. He completed his Ph.D. in 1966 at the University of California, Berkeley, with the dissertation Games of Sequence Prediction supervised by David Blackwell.
After completing his Ph.D., he returned to Washington University in St. Louis as a faculty member. He joined the Southern Methodist University faculty in 1974 as chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, was named to the Cruse C. and Marjorie F. Calahan Centennial Chair in Engineering in 2016, and retired in 2018.
Book
Matula is the coauthor, with Peter Kornerup, of the book Finite Precision Number Systems and Arithmetic (Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications 133, Cambridge University Press, 2010).
References
External links
Home page
1937 births
Living people
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Graph theorists
American computer scientists
Washington University in St. Louis alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Southern Methodist University faculty | David Matula | [
"Mathematics"
] | 271 | [
"Mathematical relations",
"Graph theory",
"Graph theorists"
] |
68,168,696 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard%20II | Mallard II is a wooden-hulled clamshell dredger used to maintain levees on the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds. Mallard II was constructed in 1936, and is "probably the oldest operating dredge in California"; she is owned and operated by Cargill Salt.
History
Mallard II was built in 1936, and has maintained the levees of the salt ponds ever since, except for a brief period during World War II during which she was used to retrieve artillery shells from the floor of the Bay near Mare Island and the Port Chicago Naval Magazine. Over time, she received extensive upgrades (including a modern engine, steel A-frame and boom). The steel frame was installed by Bethelehem Pacific's San Francisco shipyard in 1954, at which point she maintained levees on over of ponds in the South Bay as well as Napa County. She has been described as a "floating wood-and-metal dinosaur", with a bucket capable of moving as much as of mud per day. While dredging, she is anchored by "spikes", and moves from place to place by "grabbing hold of the sea floor". Mallard II was used to construct such watercourses as North Creek; in 1972 she was briefly idled while the Leslie Salt Company sought dredging permits from the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Salt ponds on which Mallard II is used must be kept at a higher water level than they otherwise would be, owing to her draft.
In 2002, she was used for the Eden Landing wetland restoration project, for which Cargill donated the use of the dredger and 400 man-hours of labor.
As of 2007, she was the only wooden-hulled clamshell dredger operating in San Francisco Bay, as well as "probably the oldest operating dredge in California", responsible for maintaining of levees between Hayward, Redwood City and San Jose. She repairs and maintains approximately of levee per year. Mallard II can operate for more than two months without being refueled. As of December 2020, she was still operational.
Levees
The levees surrounding the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds date to the late 1800s, and were mostly constructed to reclaim land for agricultural purposes; the area enclosed by them was later used for salt production. In addition to their role in operating the salt ponds, the levees protect Bay Area cities like San Jose from being flooded by high tides.
Due to factors such as erosion and subsidence, the levees require regular maintenance. Dredging material to increase the levees' height, the "least expensive technique available", consists of moving Mallard II into a salt pond through a set of locks and using her clamshell bucket to remove material from a borrow pit; this material is then deposited atop the levee. When Mallard II is present in a salt pond, waterfowl hunting is not permitted.
A December 2020 permit for a wetlands project issued by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife provided for maintenance of salt ponds to be carried out by the still-operational Mallard II, using the existing system of dredge locks, referred to as "the most technologically and economically feasible method for solar salt production in south San Francisco Bay". While it would be possible to reduce some of the adverse impacts of levee maintenance (mostly caused by the existence of the dredge lock system) by using a "transportable dredge", it was found that such a dredge would require more frequent refueling (every two weeks, as opposed to every two months with Mallard II), as well as the use of large trucks and cranes to reposition it; Mallard II, therefore, was found to be the "most feasible alternative". A 2005 estimate of expenses for levee maintenance in the area put the cost of using Mallard II at approximately $50,000 per month.
References
Dredgers
1936 ships
Cargill
San Francisco Bay
Salt production | Mallard II | [
"Chemistry"
] | 805 | [
"Salt production",
"Salts"
] |
68,168,768 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate%20Crisis%20Advisory%20Group | The Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) is an independent group of scientists which advises on climate change and biodiversity, headed by Sir David King.
Its goal is to "provide the global public with regular analysis about efforts to tackle the global heating and biodiversity crises".
CCAG's launch statement and first report state that the Earth may have already passed several dangerous tipping points, including melting ice sheets, the slowdown of Atlantic circulation and the dieback of the Amazon rainforest, which highlight the need for speed.
Members
Members of the CCAG are scientists from multiple disciplines that are all advocates for the environment. The group was formed so that every continent (besides Antarctica) was represented. All members volunteer their time to the group. Members include:
Nerilie Abram
Ade Adepitan - Presenter
Dr Fatima Denton
Dr. Christophie McGlade Director at the International Energy Agency (IEA)
Mercedes Bustamante
Alice Hill
Dr. Robert W. Corell
Dr. Arunabha Ghosh
Sir David King - Chair
Dr. Klaus Lackner
Prof Mark Maslin
Lavanya Rajamani
Johan Rockström
Lorraine Whitmarsh
Prof Qi Ye
Mariana Mazzucato
Gustavo Luedamann
Dr Guido Schmidt-Traub
References
External links
List of CCAG Reports
CCAG press releases
CCAG Youtube channel where they stream their monthly meetings
Climate change
Biodiversity | Climate Crisis Advisory Group | [
"Biology"
] | 272 | [
"Biodiversity"
] |
68,169,001 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor%C5%9Funtepe | Norşuntepe is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Elazığ Province (Turkey). The site was occupied between the Chalcolithic and Iron Age and is now partially submerged by Lake Keban. It was excavated between 1968 and 1974.
The site and its environment
Before it was flooded, Norşuntepe was located on the Altınova Plain near the mouth of the Murat River (downstream from the town of Palu, Elazığ). It is now partially submerged by the reservoir created by the Keban Dam; its top is still above the water level. The site consists of a central hill or "acropolis" measuring and high, making it the largest tell in the area. The central hill is surrounded by lower terraces encompassing an area of .
History
Norşuntepe was occupied from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age. The excavators have recognized 40 different occupation levels ranging in date from the fifth millennium BC to ca. 600 BC. Its occupation levels overlap to a large degree with those excavated at nearby Arslantepe.
Chalcolithic
The Chalcolithic occupation at Norşuntepe can be divided in 3 phases. The oldest Phase I dates to the Middle Chalcolithic and included Ubaid-type pottery. Phase II represents the Late Chalcolithic and during its final levels, more complex architecture appeared in the excavated area.
Phase II: Metallurgy and arsenical bronze
Also during Phase II, copper and arsenical bronze production was practiced at the site.
Norşuntepe provides first clear and unambiguous evidence of arsenical bronze production in this general area before the 4th millennium. It demonstrates that some form of arsenic alloying was being deliberately practised. Since the slag identified at Norşuntepe contains no arsenic, this means that arsenic-bearing materials were added separately. The evidence was discovered at the levels with Ubaid style ceramics, where also were found a number of structures related to the Mesopotamian architectural traditions. A related site in the area from the same time period is Değirmentepe, where arsenic-bronze was also produced around 4200 BC.
Phase III
The final Chalcolithic phases were characterized by small-scale single-room houses. Radiocarbon dating from the different Chalcolithic levels provided dates between 4300-3800 BC.
Early Bronze
The site reached a size of 3.2 hectares in the Early Bronze I and II periods and then shrank to 0.8 hectares in EB III. After a hiatus, Norşuntepe was again occupied during the Early Bronze Age. During this period, the site was surrounded by a mudbrick city wall built on a stone foundation. There is evidence for copper production and some sort of palace or large, central building appears at the site in the final phases. In terms of material culture and architecture, there are clear parallels with Transcaucasia, and the Kura–Araxes culture. The latest Early Bronze Age phase in Norşuntepe ends in fire.
Middle Bronze
The Middle Bronze Age settlement is smaller than its precursor and no evidence for a palace has been found.
Late Bronze
The Late Bronze Age remains at Norşuntepe was heavily disturbed by later Iron Age activity, but some larger buildings have been excavated.
Iron Age
The Early Iron Age at Norşuntepe (1150–800 BC) is characterized by a shift away from Hittite material culture, possibly as a result of the influx of immigrants such as the Mushki. The settlement seems to have been restricted to the south terrace and may have had a rural character. During its final occupation phases (800–600 BC), Norşuntepe was part of Urartu. A building with a large, columned hall was located on the mail hill, whereas a second large building, possibly a caravanserai, was excavated on the south terrace. A cemetery located on the hill top included a burial chamber where three horses together with gear and weapons were buried.
The hilltop was again used as a cemetery during the Medieval Period.
Excavations
It was excavated between 1968 and 1974 under the direction of German archaeologist Harald Hauptmann as part of the salvage project to document archaeological sites that would be flooded by the construction of the Keban Dam. Excavation of the site focused on three areas: the western slope, the so-called "acropolis" area, and the south terrace.
See also
Aratashen
References
Archaeological sites in Eastern Anatolia
Geography of Elazığ Province
Chalcolithic sites of Asia
Bronze Age sites in Asia
Iron Age sites in Asia
Urartian cities
Tells (archaeology)
Archaeometallurgy
Kura-Araxes culture | Norşuntepe | [
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science"
] | 947 | [
"Archaeometallurgy",
"Metallurgy"
] |
68,169,022 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile%20positioning%20data | Mobile positioning data (MPD) is a form of big data which results from the high data volumes of mobile positioning – tracking the location of mobile phones.
Mobile positioning data can be used for generating population and tourism statistics, for measuring human mobility, creating data-driven solutions in urban planning, establishing a response plan to disasters etc.
There are many ways to track the location of a mobile device in a network but this article covers mobile positioning data from network-based technologies:
Active mobile positioning is based on mobile network operators where the location of the mobile phone is determined with a special query. Mobile phones are positioned based on network signals from the network antennae, and usually using the signal triangulation method. Collecting this data generally requires special permissions (consent from people being positioned), meaning that the number of people who are being positioned is usually small.
Passive mobile positioning uses metadata from mobile phone use, such as incoming or outgoing calls or text messages (call detail records) or mobile internet usage (data detail records), that are automatically stored by every mobile network operator. The accuracy of passive mobile positioning is limited to the coverage area of network cells, which can range from a few hundred metres to multiple kilometres.
Compared to passive mobile positioning, active mobile positioning yields more accurate location data and provides a greater frequency in the data points created. Although less accurate, passive mobile positioning data has many benefits: it can be collected more easily compared to active mobile positioning data (requires no individual agreements), the number of people positioned can be much bigger and it can be gathered for longer periods of time.
History
Identifying mobile device locations achieved greater precision at the beginning of the 2000s. An important part was played by the E911 law accepted in the USA which made it mandatory to determine the original location of emergency calls. As the technical solutions of identifying a mobile phone's location developed further, different location based-services started to emerge. This possibility of observing people's movements and also their social characteristics became a subject of great interest for researchers and it was first introduced as the Social Positioning Method (SPM) in 2004. The method was developed by the Department of Geography of the University of Tartu, with professor Rein Ahas at the head and the company Positium, who also carried out the first research employing that method. SPM-based research focused on social flows in time and space by analysing the location coordinates of mobile phones (and also the social identification of the people carrying them). Since that method used active mobile positioning, consent from the people observed was needed. Mobile positioning data emerged as a completely new source of information and analysis in geography and social sciences. The benefit of using this kind of data was that it enabled further describing the space-time movements of the society, meaning this information could be used for research, planning and the administration of public life.
Attributes and types of mobile positioning data
A mobile positioning record is created in the database of a mobile network operator when a mobile device is communicating with the network. These records are considered passive mobile positioning data and when they are created, they are registered by different network entities. For example, when a mobile device initiates a location area update, a database (such as Visitor Location Register) stores the corresponding location area code. Every time a subscriber uses services like calling, messaging or mobile internet, different records are generated.
The main attributes that characterise mobile positioning data are the following:
unique subscriber's identifier (randomly generated to anonymise the dataset)
time attribute (date, hours, minutes and seconds)
location (at the level of the cell tower that the mobile device was connected to). For domestic and inbound mobile positioning data, the geographical reference is the location and/or the coverage area of the network cell (initially the ID of the cell). For outbound mobile positioning data, the initial geographical reference is the country of the roaming partner MNO.
Passive mobile positioning data can be divided into three categories from the perspective of a mobile network operator:
domestic mobile positioning data – any mobile positioning record created within the network of a mobile network operator (MNO) resulting from the mobile device use of a subscriber of a home MNO.
outbound mobile positioning data – any mobile positioning record created in a roaming network of a foreign MNO resulting from the mobile device use of a subscriber of a home MNO.
inbound mobile positioning data – any mobile positioning record created within the network of a mobile network operator resulting from the mobile device use of a roaming subscriber of a foreign MNO.
Use cases
The digital footprint left by mobile device users is sensitive, but also highly valuable, as it provides new possibilities of measuring and monitoring the spatio-temporal activities of the population. This makes MPD a great data source for gathering statistics, as it can fill in the gaps where other data sources are lacking. Traditionally, people's location and mobility are studied via questionnaires, travel and time use surveys, censuses. This method, however, has many limitations. The sample of questionnaires is usually relatively small and although censuses cover the whole population and contain detailed information, they are not held frequently. Thus the data from questionnaires can be gathered only in some discrete moments in time. The collection of MPD, however, is continuous and can cover the majority of the population. Also, since passive mobile positioning data is collected continuously by mobile network operators, it offers the possibility of generating statistics on a very granular level. Furthermore, it allows producing near real-time statistics as well statistics on events that happened years ago.
A number of research papers and use cases shows that mobile positioning data plays a very important role in various domains such as tourism, health, socio-economics, disaster response, urban management, etc. Authors indicate a plethora of fields that could benefit from the use of mobile positioning, such as urban and transportation planning, traffic flow monitoring, event planning (concerts, sports, festivals), safety and security (risk analyses based on the number of people at a specific location at a specific time), transportation origin-destination matrices, tourism and place marketing, epidemiology (geographic spreading of infectious diseases), and monitoring of hotspots (gathering places for tourists and residents). Much of this research is conducted on the basis of identifying meaningful locations, such as home and work anchor points, with the help of passive mobile positioning data.
Some domain-specific examples of MPD use include the following:
Tourism – MPD enables examining tourist flows and linking them with event attendance and location visits, helping many tourism associations to plan and manage their work and services more efficiently.
Transportation – MPD can effectively be used for a data-driven approach to reorganising public transportation. For example, in Estonia, the city government of Tartu launched a bus route network which was designed by using mobile positioning data to understand user needs and travelling routes.
Development – call detail records can be analysed with the aim of planning humanitarian development actions, such as emergency migration in Haiti, malaria mapping in Kenya, poverty level estimation in Côte d'Ivoire.
Social good – MPD can be used to inform development and humanitarian work. Examples of such use cases include predicting dengue fever outbreaks more quickly in Pakistan, using rapid and near real-time assessment of population displacement following the Nepal earthquake.
Modelling epidemics – since human mobility is the main component of large-scale spatial transmission of infectious diseases, it is critical to model and quantify human mobility in order to improve epidemic control. Examples: analysing Malaria transmission in Senegal, responding to Ebola outbreak, monitoring the spread of cholera outbreaks.
Poverty and wealth – accurate and timely estimates of population characteristics are a critical input to social and economic research and policy. An example of a use case here is predicting wealth throughout Rwanda using mobile positioning data.
Seasonal mobility – analysing human movement patterns and monitoring changes in them are important for decision-making. For example, in MPD-based research carried out in Senegal, the movement patterns of different population groups were extracted and visualised.
Official statistics
Mobile positioning data can be used in the production of official statistics.
As at 2021, there are two countries in the world where statistics providers use passive mobile positioning data as part of the regular production of official tourism statistics: Estonia and Indonesia. Eesti Pank, the central bank of Estonia, produces official tourism travel statistics based on passive mobile positioning data since 2008 and the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism produces MPD-based inbound cross-border visitor arrival statistics since 2016.
Advantages of mobile positioning data
For statistical purposes, mobile positioning data provides new possibilities in terms of the quality of the data. Statistics based on MPD can be compiled automatically, in some cases almost in real time, and it requires less manual labour. The job of analysing and interpreting the resulting statistical indicators is left for statisticians and researchers, but the new concept of fast and expansive data collection improves the quality of decision-making processes and results in public and private sectors.
Mobile positioning data is said to have better spatial and temporal precision than regular tourism statistics. The precision of antennae offers more perspectives of research than accommodation statistics does. Digital records on the movements of tourists make it possible to analyse their space-time behaviour. This allows the linking of routes used by tourists with the places they visited and the connecting of sites of interest with points of entry or with final destinations in the country etc. Space-time precision enables the investigation of single events and their geography more than had previously been possible. This allows studying the extent and impacts of events such as fairs, concerts, sports events and also managing crowds of visitors. Mobile positioning data is also touted to be suitable for studying tourism in less visited natural areas where it is difficult to use other methods such as accommodation statistics or questionnaires.
The timeliness of statistics (up to near real-time) and the possibility of producing unconfirmed quick indicators are further features provided by mobile positioning data. On the other hand, researchers might also face difficulty in assessing the quality of statistics based on MPD because the prevalence of mobile phone usage during travel is largely unknown and the methodology might not be firm. A relative lack of information on the purpose of the trip, expenditure, type of accommodation and means of transport used are also cited as common issues. Nevertheless, passive mobile positioning data has several advantages, which can substantiate its use and even open up new perspectives in tourism studies and management tools. One of the biggest advantages of positioning data is the possibility of monitoring tourism in real time. The data can be gathered regularly and visualised in a real-time environment.
Disadvantages of mobile positioning data
Mobile positioning data has also some weaknesses, such as the fact that even this data will not represent the total population since there are also people without mobile phones (young children, the elderly, certain socio-economic groups). In addition, the usage habits of mobile phone users can be very different, which, in the end, influences the resulting dataset. Furthermore, when using passive mobile positioning data, there is no information regarding the background of the users: their characteristics, socio-economic indicators, purpose of the trip, type of accommodation and means of transport used etc. More detailed information on these characteristics can be gathered with additional questionnaires in the case of active mobile positioning data, the collection of which generally requires special permissions (consent from people being positioned) anyway. However, the obligation of asking for permission means that the sample of actively positioned people is usually small.
The spatial accuracy of passive mobile positioning depends on the geographical division of the mobile network, which is not equally distributed in space. This means that passive mobile positioning is spatially more precise in densely populated urban areas and near highways due to a larger number of cell towers, but in the countryside, for example, the accuracy is lower. Moreover, the accuracy of passive mobile positioning is limited to the coverage area of network cells, which can range from a few hundred metres to multiple kilometres.
Privacy concerns
Mobile positioning technology in general might create fears that people's locations and activities are being monitored from away. Many of the concerns related to positioning data are in the privacy and surveillance fields and those issues need to be addressed and discussed very carefully. In the field of MPD, many different measures are in place to safeguard users' privacy, such as data pseduonymisation/anonymisation, whereby a subscriber's personal identity code can be modified or data can be aggregated to give anonymity to the subjects. Alongside that, sampling (decreasing the possibility for a person to be included in a dataset) and obfuscation (masking or hiding original data) could be used as alternatives or employed for further increasing the level of privacy protection.
References
Big data | Mobile positioning data | [
"Technology"
] | 2,610 | [
"Data",
"Big data"
] |
68,170,572 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeneXpert%20Infinity | The GeneXpert Infinity is an automated cartridge-based nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) which is able to tell whether the subject fluid contains shreds of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, amongst others. It is manufactured by Cepheid Inc.
References
Medical tests
Laboratory techniques
Molecular biology
Polymerase chain reaction
Biotechnology | GeneXpert Infinity | [
"Chemistry",
"Biology"
] | 74 | [
"Biochemistry methods",
"Genetics techniques",
"Polymerase chain reaction",
"Biotechnology",
"nan",
"Molecular biology",
"Biochemistry"
] |
68,170,987 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesternich%20test | The Kesternich test is a common name for the corrosion test with sulfur dioxide (SO2) under general moisture condensation. This test was developed in 1951 by Wilhelm Kesternich to simulate the damaging effects of acid rain.
Acid rain and acidic industrial pollutants are corrosive and can degrade coatings and plated surfaces. Kesternich testing, or sulfur dioxide testing, simulates acid rain or industrial chemical exposure to evaluate the relative corrosion resistance of the coating, substrate, or part itself. The test can be used for coatings or for base materials.
The test method is defined by various standards, DIN EN ISO 6988, DIN 50018, ASTM G87, ISO 3231, ISO 22479 are the most common. The parts to be tested are placed in a test chamber with a capacity of 300L and exposed to warm, moist air in combination with a certain amount of sulfur dioxide
Note: Sulfur is interchangeable with Sulphur and SO2 is the abbreviation for Sulfur/Sulphur Dioxide
Equipment
The test chamber has a set volume of 300L. The construction of the inner housing of the chamber and the devices for arranging the samples must be made of inert and corrosion-resistant materials so that there is no reaction between the sample to be tested and the material of the chamber. The SO2 injection can be performed manually or automatically depending on the chamber.
Principle
The principle of the test is simple:
• A defined amount of distilled or deionized water is poured into the floor pan of the test chamber.
• The samples are placed in the chamber above the water level. The door or hood of the chamber is tightly closed and hermetically sealed for safety.
• A fixed volume of sulfur dioxide is introduced into the chamber, usually either 1 L (0.33%) or 2 L (0.66%) Volume of SO2.
The test is performed in two sections,
o Test section 1: 8 hours warm-up to 40±3 °C (relative humidity 100%)
o Test section 2: 16 hours cooling to 18 to 28 °C (relative humidity max. 75 %)
The test is usually carried out in cycles of 24 hours each.
Caution: The atmosphere containing sulfur dioxide must not be released into the room air.
Evaluation
Take samples from the chamber and let them dry in the room air. An initial assessment is made before any corrosion products are removed. When the tested parts are cleaned, the evaluation criteria must be taken into account.
Possible characteristics for evaluation: appearance after the test, appearance after removal of the corrosion products, number and size of imperfections, time to first corrosion, loss of mass.
The results are described in a test report.
Sources
• DIN EN ISO 6988 Metallic and other inorganic coatings - Test with sulfur dioxide with general moisture condensation, March 1997.
• DIN 50018 testing in an alternating condensation climate with an atmosphere containing sulfur dioxide, June 1997.
• The importance of corrosion test procedures with special consideration of the SO2 test according to DIN 50018, Wilhelm Kesternich, published in Materials and Corrosion Volume 16, Issue 3, pages 193-201, March 1965.
Further reading
DIN EN ISO 6988 Metallic and other inorganic coatings - Test with sulfur dioxide with general moisture condensation, March 1997. This standard has been superseded by ISO 22479 and it is only mentioned for bibliographic purposes
DIN 50018 testing in an alternating condensation climate with an atmosphere containing sulfur dioxide, June 1997.
References
Analytical chemistry
Corrosion | Kesternich test | [
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science"
] | 728 | [
"Metallurgy",
"Corrosion",
"Electrochemistry",
"nan",
"Materials degradation"
] |
68,172,051 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry%20Dive | Industry Dive is an online business-to-business news organization, with an estimated 13 million readers across more than 25 industries, including banking and waste management. Since 2022, it has been owned by Informa plc, which bought its majority stake from Falfurrias Capital Partners for about $530 million.
Industry Dive writes for executives using their mobile phones. The company has reported revenues of $30 million to $60 million, mostly from selling ads. As of 2020, it has more than 300 employees, including 80 journalists and 12 engineers. Its headquarters is in Washington, D.C.
History
Industry Dive was formed in 2012 by Sean Griffey (president), Eli Dickinson (chief technology officer) and Ryan Willumson (chief revenue officer) and funded with $900,000 from private investors in 2012 and 2013. The company started by covering five industries: construction, education, marketing, utility, and waste.
In 2016, it began its Dive Awards. Industry Dive's revenues quadrupled from 2015 to 2018, putting it in the top half of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and the top 20 percent of the Inc top 5000 list. In 2019, Falfurrias Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in the company. ID's content marketing clients included IBM, Siemens, and UPS.
In 2020, DCA Live named Industry Dive to its "Red Hot Companies" list, which recognizes the D.C. area's 'fastest-growing' companies. In the same year, Industry Dive acquired CFO. In 2021, Industry Dive acquired PharmaVOICE.
In 2022, it was purchased by Informa plc, which bought its majority stake from Falfurrias Capital Partners for about $530 million.
Publications
Industry Dive provides news coverage of a variety of industries including agriculture, banking, construction, education, fashion, healthcare, and manufacturing, each using a different website:
Agriculture Dive
Automotive Dive
Banking Dive
BioPharma Dive
CFO
CFO Dive
CIO Dive
Construction Dive
C-Store Dive
Cybersecurity Dive
Education Dive
Facilities Dive
Fashion Dive
Food Dive
Grocery Dive
Healthcare Dive
Higher Ed Dive
Hotel Dive
HR Dive
K-12 Dive
Legal Dive
Manufacturing Dive
Marketing Dive
MedTech Dive
Mobile Marketer
Multifamily Dive
Packaging Dive
Payments Dive
PharmaVoice
Restaurant Dive
Retail Dive
Smart Cities Dive
Social Media Today
Supply Chain Dive
Transport Dive
Utility Dive
Waste Dive
Awards
Industry Dive publications have received several national and regional Awards of Excellence from the American Society of Business Publication Editors, including for a series of 2020 articles about Big Pharma and the race for the coronavirus vaccine.
The Washington Post recognized Industry Dive as a top place to work for four consecutive years, from 2016 to 2020.
See also
Business to Business
Digital journalism
Online journalism
References
External links
Official Website
Digital media
Technology in society
2019 mergers and acquisitions
2022 mergers and acquisitions
Informa | Industry Dive | [
"Technology"
] | 583 | [
"Multimedia",
"Digital media"
] |
68,172,268 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub%20Copilot | GitHub Copilot is a code completion and automatic programming tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI that assists users of Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and JetBrains integrated development environments (IDEs) by autocompleting code. Currently available by subscription to individual developers and to businesses, the generative artificial intelligence software was first announced by GitHub on 29 June 2021, and works best for users coding in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go. In March 2023 GitHub announced plans for "Copilot X", which will incorporate a chatbot based on GPT-4, as well as support for voice commands, into Copilot.
History
On June 29, 2021, GitHub announced GitHub Copilot for technical preview in the Visual Studio Code development environment. GitHub Copilot was released as a plugin on the JetBrains marketplace on October 29, 2021. October 27, 2021, GitHub released the GitHub Copilot Neovim plugin as a public repository. GitHub announced Copilot's availability for the Visual Studio 2022 IDE on March 29, 2022. On June 21, 2022, GitHub announced that Copilot was out of "technical preview", and is available as a subscription-based service for individual developers.
GitHub Copilot is the evolution of the 'Bing Code Search' plugin for Visual Studio 2013, which was a Microsoft Research project released in February 2014. This plugin integrated with various sources, including MSDN and Stack Overflow, to provide high-quality contextually relevant code snippets in response to natural language queries.
Features
When provided with a programming problem in natural language, Copilot is capable of generating solution code. It is also able to describe input code in English and translate code between programming languages.
According to its website, GitHub Copilot includes assistive features for programmers, such as the conversion of code comments to runnable code, and autocomplete for chunks of code, repetitive sections of code, and entire methods and/or functions. GitHub reports that Copilot’s autocomplete feature is accurate roughly half of the time; with some Python function header code, for example, Copilot correctly autocompleted the rest of the function body code 43% of the time on the first try and 57% of the time after ten attempts.
GitHub states that Copilot’s features allow programmers to navigate unfamiliar coding frameworks and languages by reducing the amount of time users spend reading documentation.
Implementation
GitHub Copilot was initially powered by the OpenAI Codex, which is a modified, production version of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), a language model using deep-learning to produce human-like text. The Codex model is additionally trained on gigabytes of source code in a dozen programming languages.
Copilot’s OpenAI Codex is trained on a selection of the English language, public GitHub repositories, and other publicly available source code. This includes a filtered dataset of 159 gigabytes of Python code sourced from 54 million public GitHub repositories.
OpenAI’s GPT-3 is licensed exclusively to Microsoft, GitHub’s parent company.
In November 2023, Copilot Chat was updated to use OpenAI's GPT-4 model.
Reception
Since Copilot's release, there have been concerns with its security and educational impact, as well as licensing controversy surrounding the code it produces.
Licensing controversy
While GitHub CEO Nat Friedman stated in June 2021 that "training ML systems on public data is fair use", a class-action lawsuit filed in November 2022 called this "pure speculation", asserting that "no Court has considered the question of
whether 'training ML systems on public data is fair use.'" The lawsuit from Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP challenges the legality of Copilot on several claims, ranging from breach of contract with GitHub's users, to breach of privacy under the CCPA for sharing PII.
GitHub admits that a small proportion of the tool's output may be copied verbatim, which has led to fears that the output code is insufficiently transformative to be classified as fair use and may infringe on the copyright of the original owner. In June 2022, the Software Freedom Conservancy announced it would end all uses of GitHub in its own projects, accusing Copilot of ignoring code licenses used in training data. In a customer-support message, GitHub stated that "training machine learning models on publicly available data is considered fair use across the machine learning community", but the class action lawsuit called this "false" and additionally noted that "regardless of this concept's level of acceptance in 'the machine learning community,' under Federal law, it is illegal".
FSF white papers
On July 28 2021, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) published a funded call for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot. Donald Robertson, the Licensing and Compliance Manager of the FSF, stated that "Copilot raises many [...] questions which require deeper examination." On February 24, 2022, the FSF announced they had received 22 papers on the subject and using an anonymous review process chose 5 papers to highlight.
Privacy concerns
The Copilot service is cloud-based and requires continuous communication with the GitHub Copilot servers. This opaque architecture has fueled concerns over telemetry and data mining of individual keystrokes.
Security concerns with direct use of model output without oversight or testing
A paper accepted for publication in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in 2022 assessed the security of code generated by Copilot for the MITRE’s top 25 code weakness enumerations (e.g., cross-site scripting, path traversal) across 89 different scenarios and 1,689 programs. This was done along the axes of diversity of weaknesses (its ability to respond to scenarios that may lead to various code weaknesses), diversity of prompts (its ability to respond to the same code weakness with subtle variation), and diversity of domains (its ability to generate register transfer level hardware specifications in Verilog). The study found that across these axes in multiple languages, 39.33% of top suggestions and 40.73% of total suggestions led to code vulnerabilities. Additionally, they found that small, non-semantic (i.e., comments) changes made to code could impact code safety.
Education concerns
A February 2022 paper released by the Association for Computing Machinery evaluates the impact Codex, the technology used by GitHub Copilot, may have on the education of novice programmers. The study utilizes assessment questions from an introductory programming class at the University of Auckland and compares Codex’s responses with student performance. Researchers found that Codex, on average, performed better than most students; however, its performance decreased on questions that limited what features could be used in the solution (e.g., conditionals, collections, and loops). Given this type of problem, "only two of [Codex’s] 10 solutions produced the correct output, but both [...] violated [the] constraint." The paper concludes that Codex may be useful in providing a variety of solutions to learners, but may also lead to over-reliance and plagiarism.
See also
References
External links
GitHub
Applications of artificial intelligence
OpenAI
2021 software | GitHub Copilot | [
"Technology"
] | 1,583 | [
"GitHub",
"Computing websites"
] |
68,173,390 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin%20%28service%29 | Bulletin was an online newsletter platform launched by Facebook on July 6, 2021, that allows notable writers to make announcements directly to their subscribers. Its competitors include Substack, of which Bulletin was called a "near-clone." Writers participating in the platform's launch included Malcolm Gladwell, Mitch Albom, Tan France, Jessica Yellin, Jane Wells, Erin Andrews and Dorie Greenspan. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Bulletin represented the first time that the company had "built a project that is directly for journalists and individual writers."
In October 2022 Meta announced the shutdown of Bulletin. The platform went into read only mode in January 2023 and became unavailable in April 2023.
History
Facebook announced Bulletin as its online newsletter platform on June 29, 2021. and launched by the company on July 6, 2021. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted the service by saying that Bulletin represented the first time that the company had "built a project that is directly for journalists and individual writers." Writers participating in the platform's launch included Malcolm Gladwell, Mitch Albom, Tan France, Jessica Yellin, Jane Wells, Erin Andrews and Dorie Greenspan.
Criticism
Unlike competitor such as Substack, Facebook indicated upon service's launch that it would not take a cut of subscription fees of writers using that platform. According to Washington Post technology writer Will Oremus, the move was criticized by those who viewed it as a form of predatory pricing intended by Facebook to force those competitors out of business. Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director of the think tank Open Markets, called for the government to reexamine predatory pricing as a violation of antitrust law, saying, "We want companies to compete by making better products, investing in new equipment and tech — not purely relying on their financial advantages to capture market share."
References
External links
Facebook
2021 establishments in California
Internet properties established in 2021
2021 establishments in the United States
Products introduced in 2021
Proprietary cross-platform software
Social media
Online companies of the United States
Blog hosting services | Bulletin (service) | [
"Technology"
] | 418 | [
"Computing and society",
"Social media"
] |
76,978,854 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate%20between%20the%20hoe%20and%20the%20plough | The Debate between the hoe and the plough (CSL 5.3.1) is a work of Sumerian literature and one of the six extant works belonging to this literature's genre of disputations poem. It was written on clay tablets and dates to the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. mid-3rd millennium BC) and runs 196 lines in length. The text was reconstructed by M. Civil in the 1960s. The two protagonists, as in other disputation poems, are two inarticulate things: in this case, two pieces of agricultural equipment, the hoe and the plough. The debate is about which is the better tool.
The Hoe and Plough is (along with Sheep and Grain) the best attested of the disputation poems given its attestation from ~60 manuscripts, likely due to its integral place as part of the ancient Sumerian scribal curriculum especially at the city of Nippur where the overwhelming majority of the manuscripts are provenanced. An up-to-date list of the manuscripts of the text is provided by Attinger 2015.
This disputation is also the only of the six Sumerian disputations to lack a cosmogony in its prologue. In place of the cosmogony is a hymn or a series of epithets addressed to Hoe (such as "child of a poor man") covering the first 5 lines. The disputation itself begins when Hoe declares that "I want to dispute with Plow!" The dispute covers lines 9 to 187. Hoe speaks in lines 9–19, 67–187 and Plough speaks in lines 21–66. One argument Hoe cites is its ability to make bricks, repair walls and so forth; Plough cites its agricultural utility like for tasks such as sowing. The adjudication begins when the god Enlil spontaneously appears to render a verdict about the outcome—differing from other disputation poems where the adjudicator, a king or god, is specifically requested by one or both contenders. Enlil asks Hoe to calm down and cease his insults against Plough. The poem is concluded by a doxology where Hoe was ruled to be the winner. This accords to the normal pattern of disputation poems where the first character cast to argue also turns out as the winner. It is also common for the speaker with the longest arguments to win, as is the case here—in fact—one of the insults by Hoe against Plough is that Hoe is equipped to be used year-round, whereas Plough is only in use for one third of the year; as a reflection of this, Plough's speeches are only one-third the length of Hoe's speeches in the totality of the disputation.
The Hoe and the Plough, along with other Sumerian disputation poems, helps demonstrate the continuity of the genre for when disputation poems begin appearing in the Akkadian language. For example, Hoe and Plough contains remarkable phraseological continuity with the Akkadian Palm and Vine, which is attested in manuscripts two millennia later (3rd century BC).
Miguel Civil has used the Hoe and Plough alongside the Sumerian Farmer's Instructions to produce a visual reconstruction of the Sumerian seed-plough, demonstrating the complexity of the tool.
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Full text (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature)
Clay tablets
Comparative mythology
Creation myths
Mesopotamian myths
Religious cosmologies
Sumerian disputations
Personifications in mythology and religion | Debate between the hoe and the plough | [
"Astronomy"
] | 743 | [
"Cosmogony",
"Creation myths"
] |
76,980,056 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answers%20Research%20Journal | Answers Research Journal (ARJ) is an open-access creation science journal published by Answers in Genesis (AiG), a fundamentalist Christian apologetics organization. Founded in 2008, the online journal devotes itself to research on "recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework". ARJ research is not scientifically sound and encourages readers to doubt mainstream scientific evidence. The journal, in its embrace of young Earth creationism (YEC), supports the unscientific idea of a 6,000-year-old Earth, among other claims. The journal refuses to publish research contradicting its belief system. While ARJ undergoes a peer-review process, the journal's reviewers are selected from a pool of people who only support the stances of the journal. Therefore, members of the scientific community are excluded from the review process.
Most of the journal's articles are written by a small group of authors, many without academic credentials, and authors are able to publish pseudonymously. ARJ editorial board is not disclosed. The journal has been met with negative reception by various geologists, biologists, and scientific skeptics. Andrew Snelling, a YEC geologist, serves as the journal's editor-in-chief and as the director of research at AiG.
History and overview
Background and beliefs
Answers in Genesis (AiG) is the largest young Earth creationist (YEC) organization in the world. Publications aimed at YEC scholars have existed since the mid-1960s, though these publications typically relied upon organizational membership and fee-based subscriptions. The launch of ARJ in 2008 marked the first free, open-access YEC peer-reviewed journal. ARJ was created because creationists argued biology journals would not publish their research because such journals were biased "against God in favor of Darwin". Most of the journal's articles are written by a small group of authors, many without academic credentials. In 2012, Callie Joubert (credentials unknown) contributed to almost half of the journal's articles that year. Editor-in-chief Snelling, Joubert, and Danny Faulkner (a "young universe astronomer") contributed to 45 percent of the articles in the 2014 volume. ARJ visually resembles real scientific open-access journals such as PLOS Genetics. AiG founder Ken Ham forsees both Christians and non-Christians to read the journal. YEC geologist Andrew Snelling serves as the journal's editor-in-chief and as the director of research at AiG. According to Snelling, the journal strives to "publish the best research possible from a creationist perspective in the sciences, humanities and theology." The journal's objective is not scientific inquiry. Rather, it aims to align their scholars' findings with a literal reading of the Bible.
AiG biologist Georgia Purdom contends the journal starts with the viewpoint that the Bible is true whereas other journals will "start with human reasoning as the basis for truth". The journal devotes itself to research on "recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework". Such research is not scientifically sound. ARJ espouses a YEC and literalist interpretation of the Bible, which includes beliefs such as age of the Earth is approximately 6,000 years, the Genesis flood narrative, and the rejection of macroevolution. These notions contradict mainstream science. Using radioactive dating, scientists have learned the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. ARJ attempts to disprove radioactive dating or demonstrate the entirety of the rock record was the result of the biblical flood. ARJ frequently uses scientific language in an attempt to discredit scientific studies. Primarily, the journal exists to encourage readers to doubt mainstream scientific evidence.
Editorial policies
ARJ editorial board is not disclosed and authors are not identified in the table of contents. Authors are also able to publish under a pseudonym. In order to be published in the journal, one's views must be aligned with the publisher's literalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Additionally, anyone working with AiG must sign a statement of faith, including a declaration reading: "No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record." As such, ARJ refuses to publish scientific works that contradict ideas within fundamentalist Christianity, and the editor-in-chief may reject a paper for any reason (including for violations of AiG’s "statement of faith"). While the journal undergoes a peer-review process, it is subject to extreme publication bias since the journal's reviewers are selected from a pool of individuals who "support the positions taken by the journal". As a result, members of the scientific community are excluded from the review process. The concept of "faith-checking" is also included in the review process. In the words of skeptic Steven Novella, the journal's peer-review process is "worthless" as it "serves only to give a false imprimatur of scientific legitimacy to a religious anti-scientific ideology."
Notable articles
The inaugural article of the journal, written by Liberty University professor Alan Gillen, was titled "Microbes and the days of creation". The paper dealt with the history of microorganisms and argued that they were created by God to act as "biological systems" with plants, animals, and humans. (The topic of microbiology is not mentioned anywhere within biblical scripture.) Additionally, Gillen argued the origins of HIV goes back to the biblical Fall (i.e., when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden).
An article written by Rod J. Martin, described only as an "independent researcher", gave a creationist and denialist interpretation of climate change. According to Martin, climate change is essentially a hoax invented by "atheistic evolutionists". His thesis, incorrectly, states: "There is no reason either biblically or scientifically to fear the exaggerated and misguided claims of catastrophe as a result of increasing levels of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2)." A 2009 article proposes that God made oil shortly after creating the Earth and cites the biblical story of Noah's Ark as "evidence for his theory."
In an attempt to disprove evolution, a 2013 article argued that humans and chimpanzees only shared 70% of DNA. While there is no objective method to determine the percent DNA similarities of two species, scientists have come up with a range of 95–98% similarity between humans and chimps (with 96% being the consensus). The study compares whole chromosomes to see how they match up instead of comparing point mutations in specific parts of the chromosomes. The author of the study revised his estimate in 2015 to 88% after discovering a software bug in his genome sequence algorithm.
Reception
Since inception, the journal has faced criticism from scientific skeptics. Biologist Paul Z. Myers refers to the journal as a "dishonest enterprise" and suggests "everything published in [ARJ] will be a crank paper". Novella regards the journal as an "insidious attack on science" and should be used as "a tool for exposing creationists for what they are." Describing the journal as "nonsense", philosopher Massimo Pigliucci contends the journal was created because "[creationists] seek respectability through fake museums and peer-reviewed journals because they know that the Middle Ages are over, and just shouting one's faith in a god is not going to cut it anymore."
Keith Miller, a geologist and evangelical Christian, says publications like ARJ are largely ignored by the scientific community but those lacking a scientific background may not be able to differentiate ARJ from genuine scientific journals. Anthropologist Eugenie Scott states ARJ is part of the "continued battle to excise science from local curricula". Mocking ARJ as a "science journal", geneticist Adam Rutherford writes, "sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken", and posited the journal may be a prank. While applauding the journal's use of a double-blind peer review system, an article in Discover lamented that "there won't be any actual science to evaluate."
See also
Creation Research Society Quarterly
Journal of Creation
References
External links
Fringe science journals
Creationism
Academic journals established in 2008
Open access journals
Creation science
English-language journals
Young Earth creationism
Online-only journals
Annual journals
Creationist publications | Answers Research Journal | [
"Biology"
] | 1,740 | [
"Creationism",
"Biology theories",
"Obsolete biology theories"
] |
76,980,241 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%20Kunwoo | Lee Kunwoo (; born December 11, 1955) is the 5th President of DGIST and is a scientist and professor in the field of engineering.
Education
He received BS in mechanical engineering from Seoul National University in 1978, MS in 1981 and PhD in 1984 from MIT.
Career
He has been the co-editor-in-chief of Computer-Aided Design of Elsevier from 2004 to 2014, and an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computational Design and Engineering of Oxford Press since 2014. He has been the founding president of Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology of Seoul National University from 2004 to 2009, the Dean of the College of Engineering of Seoul National University from 2013 to 2017, the founding Dean of the Graduate School of Engineering Practice of Seoul National University from 2016 to 2017, and a Vice President of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea from 2015 to 2020. Currently, he is a member of The Korean Academy of Science and Technology and a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was the president of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2013 and the Korean Society for Engineering Education from 2017 to 2018.
Research interests
His research interests include CAD system supporting multi-resolution modeling, custom tailoring systems for shoes and wigs, dental CAD system, 3D printers, and integrated framework called human-centered CAD system in which products can be designed based on simultaneous simulation of products and human operator. He established two start-ups, one in Korea and the other in the US.
He is the author of the book, “Principles of CAD/CAM/CAE Systems”, published by Addison-Wesley in 1999. More than 10,000 copies have been sold. His papers and patents were cited 7,354 times.
References
Living people
1955 births
Seoul National University alumni
Mechanical engineers
Presidents of universities and colleges in South Korea
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni | Lee Kunwoo | [
"Engineering"
] | 372 | [
"Mechanical engineers",
"Mechanical engineering"
] |
76,980,725 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAS%20F11119%2B3257 | IRAS F11119+3257 or simply as F11119+3257, is a galaxy located in constellation Ursa Major. With a redshift of 0.187580, it has a light travel time distance of 2.5 billion light-years and is considered an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG).
Characteristics
The nucleus of IRAS F11119+3257 is active. It has been classified as a narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy and has a post-merger morphology. It is also a type-1 quasar, emitting out (LX 10^44 erg/s at z=0.189) with a persistent ultra-fast outflow at v 0.25c, observed with both NuSTAR and Suzaku. IRAS F11119+3257 is said to be the first system which is possible to connect nuclear outflow with a galaxy-scale molecular outflow, observed in hydroxide (OH) and carbon monoxide (CO) transitions. The high-ionization emission lines ([O III], [Ne III], and [Ne V]) are dominated by blueshifted components at similar speeds to the mini-BAL QSOs.
The emission in IRAS F11119+3257, is dominated by its active galactic nucleus (AGN) component. Researchers found that there is direct evidence of a quasar accretion disk driving a massive (>100 M ⊙ yr-1) molecular outflow. They saw that the energetics of the accretion disk wind and molecular outflow are consistent with the predictions of quasar feedback models where the molecular outflow is driven by a hot energy-conserving bubble, inflated by its inner quasar accretion disk wind, but the conclusion is uncertain. However, they were able to confirm the presence of the molecular outflow in IRAS F11119+3257, based on the detection of ~±1000 km/s blue and redshifted wings in the CO(1–0) emission line profile derived from deep ALMA observations obtained in the compact array configuration (~2.8 resolution).
With a supermassive black hole mass of Mbh ≈ 2 × 107 M⊙ calibrated for a sample of similar ULIRG sources, the bolometric luminosity for IRAS F11119+3257 is Lb = 5LEdd, where LEdd is the Eddington luminosity, suggesting that the active galactic nucleus is responsible for about 80 per cent of its emission, with a quasar-like luminosity of 1.5 × 1046 ergs per second. From the correlation relation between infrared and radio luminosities for starburst galaxies, the AGN component in IRAS F11119+3257 is found to exceed the starburst contribution. Apart from the molecular outflows, the galaxy hosts a wide-aperture energetic radiation-driven X-ray emitting winds, suggesting a likely energy conserving quasar-mode feedback.
Researchers also found that IRAS F11119+3257 has a relatively bright radio counterpart. The early survey of the Bologna Northern Cross Radio Telescope (BNCRT) at 408 MHz, conducted by Colla et al. (1970) found there is a half-Jy radio counterpart in the galaxy. Later, it was observed by more radio telescopes at multiple radio frequencies, whom they found IRAS F11119+3257 indicates a compact emission structure. Moreover, its radio spectrum between 0.15 and 96 GHz shows a peak at 0.53 ± 0.06 GHz and a steep slope of ν−1.31±0.02 in the optically thin part.
From the EVN Observation, at 1.66 and 4.93 GHz, IRAS F11119+3257 displays a two-sided jet with a projected separation of about 200 parsec, which has an intrinsic speed of ≥0.57c. This is higher than that observed in the X-ray winds.
References
Ursa Major
Quasars
Active galaxies
Seyfert galaxies
Luminous infrared galaxies
Starburst galaxies
034264
IRAS catalogue objects | IRAS F11119+3257 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 866 | [
"Ursa Major",
"Constellations"
] |
76,981,102 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate%20between%20silver%20and%20copper | The Debate between silver and copper (CSL 5.3.6) is a work of Sumerian literature and one of the six extant works belonging to this literature's genre of disputations poem. It was written on clay tablets and dates to the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. mid-3rd millennium BC) and runs 196 lines in length. The text was reconstructed by M. Civil in the 1960s. Like other Sumerian disputation poems, it features two typically inarticulate things (in this case, two metals) debating over which one is superior.
Silver and Copper, so far as can be indicated from the manuscripts, was the least popular of the known disputation poems: only nine manuscripts are known, compared to 60–70 of Hoe and Plough and Sheep and Grain (the most popular) and 20–30 for the rest. In addition, manuscripts attest two recensions (versions) of the disputation. Recently, an important new manuscript of the text was published by Peterson in 2010.
The prologue is largely lost, although it appears that at some point during it, silver and copper bring Enlil offerings. The first to raise an argument is Silver (though some find this reconstruction contentious), followed by a rebuttal by Copper, followed by a final response by Silver. Although the adjudication scene is almost entirely lost, enough survives that it is clear that Copper won the debate (making it the only Sumerian disputation poem where the contender who does not give the first speech goes on to win). The cause of Copper's victory is that Copper has been demonstrated to be useful for all sorts of purposes, whereas Silver is merely for show or decoration.
The poem also praises Ur-Namma, indicating its composition in the Ur III period. Two of the other six disputation poems (Bird and Fish, Tree and Reed) also mention and praise a particular king from this era, which supports the contention by some historians that the Sumerian disputation poems were courtly compositions of the Ur III era, although some of them might have been earlier and simply underwent additional recensions in the Ur III era.
References
Citations
Sources
External links
Full text (ETCSL)
Bibliography (ETCSL)
Clay tablets
Comparative mythology
Creation myths
Mesopotamian myths
Religious cosmologies
Sumerian disputations
Silver
Copper
Personifications in mythology and religion | Debate between silver and copper | [
"Astronomy"
] | 491 | [
"Cosmogony",
"Creation myths"
] |
76,981,158 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAS%2009104%2B4109 | IRAS 09104+4109 is a galaxy located in the constellation Lynx. With a redshift of 0.440797, the light travel time for this galaxy, corresponds to 4.8 billion light-years from Earth. It is the brightest cluster galaxy in MACS J0913.7+4056 galaxy cluster and classified as a hyperluminous infrared galaxy.
Features
IRAS 09104+4109 has an active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is a Seyfert type 2 galaxy with a strong emission-line spectrum, but no broad lines. Moreover, IRAS 09104+4109 is classified a cD galaxy inside a cool rich cluster of galaxies, experiencing a cooling flow. The galaxy is the most luminous object to be discovered by IRAS survey, emitting 6 x 1012 Lsun h−2. 99% of its energy emerges at infrared wavelengths. The high luminosity of IRAS 09104+4109 might be related to an interaction with one or more members of the rich cluster in which it lies. It is selected by its strong 60 m emission (>0.5 Jy), yet faint optical magnitude (V>18).
The galaxy shows a "warm" far-IR color similar to luminous quasars. It is suggested much of the far-IR emission is emitted from dust heated by the central ultraviolet (UV) continuum source. The rest frame of UV/optical spectrum of the nucleus shows a type 2 spectrum with strong, narrow emission lines covering a range of ionizations. This implies photoionization by a strong UV nonthermal continuum.
IRAS 09104+4109 has a luminosity bolometer of ~ 1012.6 h−2 Lsun, which its optical spectrum is characterized by presence of narrow emission lines. These findings, found there is a quasar inside IRAS 09104+4109, ionizing the narrow-line region within ~130 pc of its central engine. Furthermore, IRAS 09104+4109 produces a radio jet.
A study conducted in 2007, proves IRAS 09104+4109 as the first "changing-look quasar". The X-ray emission in the EPIC band is dominated by the intra-cluster medium thermal emission, which the quasar contributes ~35% of the total flux in the 2–10 keV band.
Further studies in 2012, showed that IRAS 09104+4109 is a rare example of a dust enshrouded quasar, associated with a double-lobed radio source at the position angle of =333°. However, the steep radio spectral index and misalignment between the jets and ionized optical emission suggested that the orientation of the quasar in IRAS 09104+4109 had changed. Proving this hypothesis, researchers used a combination of new, multiband Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope observations and archival radio data and confirmed that the jets in IRAS 09104+ 4109, estimated to 20-160 Myr, are no longer actively fed by energetic particles. This results suggested that the realignment of the quasar, the cessation of jet activity and the onset of rapid star formation in IRAS 09104+4109, may have been caused by a gas-rich galaxy merger.
A Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) found traces of carbon oxide (2–1) in the z=0.4418 cluster-central IRAS 09104+4109, which ~4.5x1010 M sol of molecular gas is found, in and around the galaxy. The gas is located in a series of clumps extending along the old radio jets and lobes. It has a relatively low velocity dispersion of (336 [+39,-35] km/s FWHM) and shows no velocity gradients indicative of outflow or infall. Roughly, half its gas is located in a central clump on the northeast side of the galaxy overlapping a bright ionized gas filament and a spur of excess X-ray emission, suggesting that this is a location of rapid cooling.
The molecular gas is extended usually to a ~55 kpc radius. This gas is comparable to the scale of the filamentary nebula in the Perseus cluster, falling within the thermal instability radius of the intracluster medium (ICM), within ~70 kpc. Continuum measurements at 159.9 GHz from NOEMA and 850 micron from the JCMT SCUBA-2 show excess far infrared emission, which was interpreted as free-free emission arising from ongoing starburst. These observations suggest that the ICM cooling is not strongly affected by its buried quasar which can build gas reservoirs to fuel reorientation and quasar-activity of its central AGN.
References
Lynx (constellation)
Luminous infrared galaxies
Seyfert galaxies
Quasars
097525
09104+4109 | IRAS 09104+4109 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 1,027 | [
"Lynx (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
76,981,283 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick%20Snare%20Corporation | Frederick Snare Corporation, formerly known as the Snare & Triest Company, was an American engineering and construction firm.
History
The Snare & Triest Company was established in the late 1890s. Frederick Snare and Wolfgang Gustav Triest, a civil engineer active in bridge construction, created the Snare & Triest Company in 1898. The Snare & Triest Company was incorporated in 1900, with Snare as the President. It was a privately held company with offices in Philadelphia, New York, Havana, Lima, and Columbia.
Among the engineering and construction projects completed by the Frederick Snare Corporation were pier building, constructing terminals, developing power plants, planning bridges, building sugar mills, and handling complex foundation projects.
Around 1912, Snare's son Frederick Snare Jr. joined the firm, eventually becoming an executive of the company in 1919.
The company set up a Cuban headquarters and built much of Havana's early infrastructure, including highways and railways. In 1912, the Frederick Snare Company built the main railway terminal in Havana, the Havana Central railway station. By the mid-1910s, the Snare & Triest Company was constructing streetcar railways in Havana. The company was engaged in the work of constructing Havana's Víbora Sub Station in 1918.
The Snare & Triest Company became the Frederick Snare Corporation Contracting Engineers in the early 1920s. By about 1921, Frederick Snare and W.G. Triest decided to go separate ways. In New York, W.G. Triest established the firm, Triest Contracting Corporation, subway and bridge builders of New York.
In the 1930s, the Frederick Snare Corporation of New York City won the bid to build the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.
In July 1940, the firm was awarded a building contract by the Navy for its role in the development of a naval operating base at Guantánamo Bay.
In 1946, the construction of the national sports stadium, Estadio Latinoamericano, in Havana was executed by the Snare company and Cuban architect Max Borges Jr.
Projects
Construction
Whitehall Street Ferry Terminal (1908)
Battery Maritime Building (1909)
Havana Central railway station (1912)
Nicaro Nickel Processing Plant (1942)
Estadio Latinoamericano (1946)
Habana Hilton (1958)
West Side Highway
Bridge engineering
North Market Street Bridge (1928)
Triborough Bridge
Bronx–Whitestone Bridge
Rip Van Winkle Bridge
Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge
Newburgh–Beacon Bridge
Severn River Bridge
Waterfront facilities
Southwark Municipal Piers
Chelsea Piers
References
1900 establishments in New York City
Bridge engineers
Engineering companies
Construction and civil engineering companies of the United States | Frederick Snare Corporation | [
"Engineering"
] | 524 | [
"Engineering companies"
] |
76,983,392 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard%20Gustav%20Triest | Willard Gustav Triest (1905June 22, 1989) was an American civil engineer.
Early life
Willard Gustav Triest was born in 1905 in New York City, New York.
He was born into an engineering family, as his father Wolfgang Gustav Triest and maternal grandfather were involved in the Brooklyn Bridge construction. His father worked in heavy construction with the Triest Construction Company in New York.
Career
In 1926, he joined his father's firm, the Triest Contracting Corporation, subway and bridge builders of New York. He began as vice president and rose to become the company's president.
In 1941, he was commissioned in the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy where he served 5 years as a battalion and regimental commander.
In 1950, he relocated to Annapolis from New York City to build the Severn River Bridge. In Annapolis, he established the engineering firm of Snead & Triest.
In the spring of 1954, he bought a small machine business in Annapolis and eventually retired in 1986.
Death
Willard Gustav Triest died on June 19, 1989.
References
1905 births
1989 deaths
Civil engineers
American civil engineers
Civil engineering contractors
American civil engineering contractors
American bridge engineers | Willard Gustav Triest | [
"Engineering"
] | 235 | [
"Civil engineering",
"Civil engineering contractors",
"Civil engineers"
] |
76,983,517 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang%20Gustav%20Triest | Wolfgang Gustav Triest (1946) was an American civil engineer. He was the founder of the Triest Construction Company in New York, and had homes in Annapolis, Maryland, and Southampton, Long Island.
Early life
Wolfgang Gustav Triest, also known as W. G. Triest, was born in New York City, New York.
Career
In 1898, Frederick Snare and W.G. Triest founded the Snare & Triest Company. The Snare & Triest Company was incorporated in 1900. The Snare & Triest Company was renamed the Frederick Snare Corporation Contracting Engineers in the early 1920s. Around 1921, Snare and Triest agreed to part ways. He continued in heavy construction under the firm, Triest Contracting Corporation, subway and bridge builders of New York.
Triest was involved in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. His company also built part of the subway tunnel on the IND line, part of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, and the cutoff wall of Merriman Dam in Wawarsing, New York.
Death
W.G. Triest died in 1946. He was a resident of Great Neck in Nassau County at the time of his death.
References
1946 deaths
Civil engineers
American civil engineers
Civil engineering contractors
American civil engineering contractors
American bridge engineers | Wolfgang Gustav Triest | [
"Engineering"
] | 259 | [
"Civil engineering",
"Civil engineering contractors",
"Civil engineers"
] |
76,985,470 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal%20of%20Medical%20Imaging | Journal of Medical Imaging is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published bimonthly by SPIE. It covers fundamental, applied and translational research on medical imaging. It was established in 2014 and its editor-in-chief is Bennett A. Landman (Vanderbilt University).
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2022 impact factor of 2.4.
References
External links
SPIE academic journals
Bimonthly journals
Academic journals established in 2014
Biomedical informatics journals
Biomedical engineering journals
Radiology and medical imaging journals
English-language journals | Journal of Medical Imaging | [
"Biology"
] | 124 | [
"Bioinformatics",
"Biomedical informatics journals"
] |
76,986,003 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BF-20 | The BF-20 (, lit. Blue Flame 20) is a full-flow staged combustion cycle rocket engine burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen under development by LandSpace.
History
In 2021, LandSpace initiated the development of BF-20 for its Zhuque-3 rocket. As of 2024, the technical design of the engine has been completed, and a hot fire test is scheduled for 2025, with the goal of achieving flight readiness by 2027.
References
Rocket engines of China
Rocket engines using methane propellant
Rocket engines using full flow staged combustion cycle | BF-20 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 113 | [
"Rocketry stubs",
"Astronomy stubs"
] |
76,986,110 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International%20drug%20control%20conventions | The international drug control conventions, also known as the United Nations drug control conventions, are three related, non self-executing treaties that establish an international legal framework for drug control. They serve to maintain a classification system of controlled substances including psychoactive drugs and precursors, to ensure the regulated supply of those substances useful for medical and scientific purposes, and to prevent other uses. They act as the legal underpinning of the US-led global campaign against illicit drugs known as the war on drugs. Ratification is near universal among UN member countries.
The treaties are the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961; amended in 1972), the Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971), and the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988). There are also other minor treaties addressing drugs, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The conventions
The three treaties are complementary and mutually supportive. They serve to maintain a classification system of controlled substances, including psychoactive drugs and plants, and chemical precursors, to ensure the regulated supply of those substances determined to be useful for medical and scientific purposes, and to otherwise prevent production, distribution and use, with some limited exceptions and exemptions. Adoption of the treaties is near universal among the UN's 193 member countries.
The treaties are not self-executing, they operate indirectly by providing a skeleton template of provisions that have to be fleshed out in the domestic law of each member country. Thus each country has a degree of flexibility in conforming treaty obligations to their own socio-cultural, political and economic realities; this latitude has been described as a "vast grey area... subject to judicial interpretation and political contestation."
The cornerstone Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended in 1972) integrated into a single framework nine pre-existing international drug treaties dating back to 1912, and extended the control system, including to the cultivation of plants used for narcotic drugs. The subsequent two conventions addressed new developments and concerns; some 340 substances in total are listed across the three. For each of the conventions, an official Commentary provides comprehensive legal analysis to assist with interpretation.
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 was adopted in 1961, entered into force on December 13, 1964, and, as amended by the 1972 Protocol; has been joined by 186 countries as of 2022. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Single Convention aims to "combat drug abuse" by limiting "the possession, use, trade in, distribution, import, export, manufacture and production of drugs exclusively to medical and scientific purposes" and through "international cooperation to deter and discourage drug traffickers." The Single Convention classifies drugs in four schedules; Schedules I and IV are the most prohibitive (IV is a subset of I) and included opium, heroin, cocaine and cannabis (in 2020, cannabis was removed from the most restrictive Schedule IV).
Convention on Psychotropic Substances
The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was adopted in 1971, entered into force on August 16, 1976, has been joined by 184 countries. It addresses a number of synthetic psychotropic substances, such as amphetamines, barbiturates, and LSD, that had become widely used since World War II, and especially in the 1960s, and were generally not regulated internationally. According to the UNODC, the convention "responded to the diversification and expansion of the spectrum of drugs of abuse and introduced controls over a number of synthetic drugs according to their abuse potential on the one hand and their therapeutic value on the other." The convention classifies the drugs it concerns in a four-schedule system different in the details from the Single Convention schedules.
Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances was adopted in 1988, entered into force on November 11, 1990, has been joined by 191 countries. The convention addressed concern over the rapid growth in international drug trafficking. According to the UNODC, it "provides comprehensive measures against drug trafficking, including provisions against money laundering and the diversion of precursor chemicals." The treaty essentially "criminalized the entire drug market chain, from cultivation/production to shipment, sale, and possession."
Philosophy, origins, architects
The international drug conventions occurred within the newly formed United Nations, as the UN assumed the duties of the retired League of Nations after WWII. The preamble to the Single Convention establishes the overarching concern of the drug treaties as "the health and welfare of mankind". It recognizes "narcotic drugs" as "indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering" and that they "must be made [available] for such purposes". It also recognizes addiction to narcotics as "a serious evil for the individual and is fraught with social and economic danger to mankind" and that there is a duty of nations to "prevent and combat this evil".
The conventions offer a degree of interpretative flexibility within a framework of control through prohibition. Controlled substances used for medical and scientific purposes are regulated , while other uses are prohibited; "each of the treaties encourages – and often requires – that member countries put in place strong domestic penal provisions."
A report by the Library of Parliament for the government of Canada on the history of the conventions identifies four themes as critical influences on the nature of the treaties: prohibition, United States involvement, external influences, and the outsized impact of certain powerful individuals. Prohibition of illicit use, "as opposed to regulation", has been the central philosophy. The US has been "the key player in most multilateral negotiations" and the prohibitionist approach "derives largely from U.S. policy – the various forms, past and present, of the U.S. 'war on drugs'". Outside interests, including "racism, fear, economic interests, domestic and international politics, global trade, domestic protectionism, war, arms control initiatives, the Cold War, development aid, and various corporate agendas", significantly shaped the conventions. And certain individuals played an outsized role in forming the policies: "while in positions of power at opportune moments, their beliefs, morals, ambitions and single-minded determination enabled them to exert exceptional influence over the shape of the international drug control regime." The efforts of US drug control commissioner Harry Anslinger and his Canadian counterpart and policy ally, Charles Henry Ludovic Sharman, are particularly notable.
While many scholars view the drug conventions as a US-engineered prohibitionist regime, others offer more nuanced analyses. Among them, John Collins finds that, though "a plurality of the policy literature maintains this narrative, the historiography has since moved on." He suggests that the conventions emerged from complex multilateral negotiations, "a triangulation between various state interests and blocs." Sebastien Scheerer finds that global drug policy "rests on a highly coercive consensus masterminded by ... the United States", yet the US relied on "other governments' prejudices, plans and interests" in drug prohibition; America may have to "share the credit (and blame)" with other parties. James Windle notes that "prohibitions were enforced in Asian countries while the United States and Western Europe were routinely trading opium"; the "concept of prohibition being a distinctly American construct is, therefore, flawed". Collins concludes, "The United States was a key participant in the [International Drug Control System], albeit frequently an absent one, but hardly the sole force."
Administrative structure
Four entities are given authority under the drug conventions: the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The 53-member CND, a subsidiary organ of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), is the UN's main drug policy body, responsible for the drug classification schedules and policy guidance. Members are elected by ECOSOC, one of the six UN main organs. The CND also is the governing body of the UNODC, which advises governments on implementation of the conventions and produces an annual World Drug Report. UNODC's focus is mainly on security and law enforcement, rather than public health.
The INCB is an independent treaty body, mandated by the Single Convention, that monitors implementation of the conventions, oversees the legal drug supply, and maintains discussions with countries regarding compliance issues. Central to its function is an annual set of reports, submitted to ECOSOC through the CND, that overlook the global drug situation. The reporting identifies and predicts problem trends and suggests corrective actions. Technical reports list estimated national requirements, and production, manufacture, trade and consumption data, for controlled drugs for medical and scientific use, gathered from individual countries. Trends in trafficking in precursors and essential chemicals for illicit drug manufacture, and evaluation of government measures taken to prevent that traffic, are also reported.
The WHO is responsible for providing the CND with the scientific evidence and recommendations used in determining drug scheduling and evaluating proposed treaty amendments. This work is carried out by the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD), a chosen group of independent experts within the field of pharmacology. The ECDD evaluates drugs for potential for harm including addiction, and for possible medical value.
Obligations and enforcement
The conventions are legally binding, effectively under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). The INCB, charged with monitoring treaty compliance, relies primarily on direct discussion with individual countries to address non-compliance issues. Formal drug treaty disagreements between countries over issues such as treaty compliance and amendment, import-export, jurisdiction, and extradition, are addressed in dispute provisions in each of the conventions that call for remedies including negotiation, mediation, arbitration, judicial proceedings, or other "peaceful means", or turning to the International Court of Justice. Periodically, the UN General Assembly holds special session meetings on drugs that provide a normative framework for the drug conventions.
Falling out of compliance with the conventions, apart from denunciation by the UN and other countries, could have practical consequences, particularly for developing nations. The conventions regulate trade in legal pharmaceuticals, including the WHO list of essential drugs—leaving the system could make securing medicine more difficult. Being party to the three conventions is also a requirement for certain trade agreements, and for access to the European Union (EU).
Enforcement measures rely largely on dialog and diplomacy. The INCB, in addition to discussion, can call out perceived non-compliance in its reports and in public statements – "naming and shaming" – and by alerting the CND and ECOSOC. Beyond that, it has no practical enforcement power. The US has used its dominant power to enforce the conventions in other countries, in ways that include making financial aid contingent on drug control efforts, and supplying economic and military support for drug intervention.
The drug conventions do not explicitly prohibit, they establish control over a set of drugs. The personal use of illicit drugs is not outlawed, although possession is. Penalties are not specified, they are at the discretion of individual countries, and can range from mild to harsh. In practice, this flexibility has been used to create a prohibitionist, punitive war on drugs that is not explicitly required by the treaties. Negative effects of this hardline approach – increased violence and organized crime; human rights violations – have led to an increasing number of countries deviating from the regime. Deviation undermines the credibility of the drug conventions, which in turn, can weaken the entire system of UN international treaties.
Limitations and exemptions
There are limited exceptions and exemptions. For instance, the Single Convention provides exceptions to the central "exclusively to medical and scientific purposes" rule, such as for the cultivation of industrial hemp, the use of the coca leaf as a flavoring agent, and a general exemption in article 2(9) of any drug used for "other than medical and scientific purposes" (a phrase with conflicting interpretations). Countries can also join the treaties with specific national reservations.
Compliance and deviation
In international law, it is said that "treaty interpretation is an art, not a science" Expanding that view, Philip Allott states that "interpretation in International Law is an art and a game and a field of battle." While the drug conventions define clear limitations, and the VCLT serves as a critical interpretive tool, there is "a degree of latitude for policy choices at the national and subnational level" that has allowed for ample interpretive divergence.
One study examining interpretive latitude in the conventions proposed three categories of deviation by member countries: permissible policies deviate while being generally accepted, contested policies are vigorously defended as in fact being within the guidelines, and impermissible policies are clear breaches of the conventions.
In recent decades, a growing number of countries, and a majority of states in the US, have moved towards drug liberalization by variously decriminalizing cannabis and other drugs for personal consumption, and by legalizing cannabis for recreational use. This has resulted in a variety of interpretations of, and tension with, the drug treaties.
Decriminalization and personal use
In 1976, the Netherlands' policy of tolerance of limited cannabis sale and personal use came into practice. The Dutch government amended the country's Opium Act to consider cannabis as a "soft drug" and permitted gedoogbeleid (Dutch: "tolerance policy"). Trafficking and possession of cannabis remained illegal; cannabis laws were not enforced for sale of small quantities for on-site use in coffeeshops. The INCB criticism of the Dutch system has been ongoing. One annual report called it "an activity that might be described as indirect incitement. This is not in accordance with the spirit or the letter of the international drug control treaties."
In 2001, Portugal decriminalized purchase and possession for personal use of all psychoactive drugs. It maintained its treaty obligations by changing the form of prohibition from criminal law to administrative law, replacing criminal penalties with fines, reporting requirements, and treatment referrals; drugs still had to be obtained from illegal sources, as selling remained a criminal act. Initially taking a negative view, the INCB in 2005 accepted the policy as legitimate, finding that "the practice of exempting small quantities of drugs from criminal prosecution is consistent with the international drug control treaties".
Some two dozen countries have taken similar approaches to decriminalizing cannabis and other drugs for personal consumption. For instance, in Mexico in 2009, "personal use" quantities were established for a number of drugs – cannabis (5 g), cocaine (0.5 g), heroin (50 mg), methamphetamine (40 mg), LSD (0.015 mg) – possession of which would result in a referral for treatment. A 2023 briefing to the European Parliament noted: "The UN bodies monitoring compliance with the conventions seem to have come to accept these policy choices" of tolerance or administrative rather than criminal penalties.
Legalization and regulated markets
Over 50 countries and the large majority of US states have legalized cannabis for medical use. In 2020, the CND acted on a recommendation from the WHO's ECDD by removing cannabis from the Single Convention's most restrictive Schedule IV category and recognized its medical value, while retaining it in the next most restrictive Schedule I. Addressing recreational use, the INCB in 2023 stated that "legalizing the non-medical use of cannabis ... contravenes the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs" and that "the effects of cannabis use on individuals and societies should be studied further before Governments make long-term binding decisions", reminding governments that "the drug control conventions offer significant flexibility" for finding alternative solutions than legalization.
In 2012, two US states, Colorado (Amendment 64) and Washington (Initiative 502), legalized cannabis by direct vote through ballot initiatives. The INCB had warned, "Implementing the decisions of popular votes held in the United States in Colorado and Washington to allow for the recreational use of cannabis would be a violation of international laws." In August 2013, the federal government announced it would not act against states opening cannabis stores, with the expectation that state regulations would be "tough in practice, not just on paper, and include strong, state-based enforcement efforts, backed by adequate funding." The UN did not propose sanctions against the US. In 2022, the INCB said, regarding state legalization, “The Board has repeatedly expressed its concern that these developments may be inconsistent with the country’s legal obligations as a party to the three international drug conventions." Since then, over 20 other US states have legalized non-medical cannabis use.
In 2013, Uruguay legalized cannabis, with the law taking effect in April 2014, making it the first country to do so. The INCB condemned the move and stated that Uruguay "knowingly decided to break the universally agreed and internationally endorsed legal provisions". The statement continued: "Cannabis is not only addictive but may also affect some fundamental brain functions, IQ potential, and academic and job performance and impair driving skills. Smoking cannabis is more carcinogenic than smoking tobacco."
In 2018, Canada legalized cannabis, with the law taking effect that October. In "A Framework for the Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada", it was acknowledged that "Canada is one of more than 185 Parties to three United Nations drug control conventions" and said: "... it is our view that Canada's proposal to legalize cannabis shares the objectives agreed to by member states in multilateral declarations", citing protection of vulnerable citizens, evidence-based policy, and public health, safety and welfare as "the heart of a balanced approach to treaty implementation." The CND and INCB stated, "this decision contravenes the provisions of the drug control conventions, and undermines the international legal drug control framework and respect for the rules-based international order."
In Mexico, the Supreme Court in 2018 overturned as unconstitutional the prohibition of recreational cannabis use and ordered the government to enact corresponding legislation. In 2021, the Mexican Congress had still failed to change the laws, and the Court legalized personal use of cannabis. However, without updated legislation, the situation remains murky. Individuals have to apply for a permit and the federal criminal code with respect to recreational use has not been changed. The INCB, in its 2022 "Analysis of the world situation", reported, "In Mexico, legislative and policy changes concerning cannabis use for non-medical purposes continue to be in flux."
In 2021, Malta legalized cannabis, the first EU country to do so. It adopted a law echoing article 2(9) of the Single Convention (exemption for the use of drugs for industrial purposes), leading some scholars to consider it the first national legalization to achieve compliance with the drug control treaties.
Impact of the banking sector
The US banking industry has created pressure on both domestic and foreign cannabis legalization. While the US has allowed state-level legalization, cannabis remains a federally prohibited drug, keeping the US broadly in compliance with the international drug treaties. Thus, federally regulated banks in the US are reluctant to engage with cannabis-related businesses. In the US, this has largely prevented access to bank accounts, credit card processing, and loans by cannabis businesses operating legally at the state level. The situation is similar in Canada, where all five major national banks have a significant presence in the US. The US Patriot Act, which prohibits US banks from doing business with distributors of "controlled substances" such as cannabis, adds further complication: after legalization in Uruguay, US banks threatened to sever ties with Uruguayan banks that were dealing with cannabis suppliers.
Reservations by individual countries
When joining any of the three drug treaties, a country has the option to make reservations in order to modify or exclude specific treaty provisions for that country.
In joining the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the US filed a reservation excepting "peyote harvested and distributed for use by the Native American Church in its religious rites"; the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made a corresponding exemption to the US Controlled Substances Act.
In January 2012, Bolivia withdrew from the Single Convention over the indigenous use of the coca leaf. It soon re-applied to the convention with a reservation allowing traditional use of coca; the re-accession came into force in February 2013. Blocking the reservation required objection by 61 countries, one-third of the, at the time, 183 parties to the convention; 15 countries objected by the deadline. The UNODC said it would "continue to work in Bolivia in accordance with its mandates to support the national system of drug control and the country's international cooperation in these matters."
Human rights
The drug conventions have been criticized for contributing to violations of the human rights principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Criminal justice and "harsh" penalties
, 35 countries have the death penalty for drug offenses; of those, the 33 UN full member countries are parties to the UN drug conventions. Nine of those countries – China, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Malaysia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Vietnam – are considered "high application" countries that regularly perform drug crime executions. The conventions encourage criminal penalties but do not provide guidelines for what is appropriate, which can be "an invitation to governments to enact abusive laws and policies, especially in a global context where drugs and drug trafficking are defined as an existential threat to society and the stability of nations".
Modification and reform
Despite an increasing number of countries deviating from the conventions, particularly in the area of cannabis legalization, the prospect of fundamental amendment of the treaties seems distant at best, as the parties are roughly split between those who favor reform and those who adamantly back the existing prohibitionist regime. Provisions for treaty revision in the conventions allow changes to be easily blocked by states supporting a more prohibitive approach. The 1972 Protocol amending the Single Convention marked the only successful attempt to modify the drug conventions to date.
Apart from formal amendment, there other the options. Countries can of withdraw entirely, or withdraw and re-accede with a reservation, as in the case of Bolivia's coca leaf exception. Another option is inter se treaty modification, provided for in the VCLT, where two or more countries create a sub-treaty framework and modify certain convention provisions, such as for cannabis, to their needs; additional countries could accede at later dates. A 2023 policy paper on treaty-compliant approaches to cannabis regulation within the EU explored 11 potential options under a variety of scenarios.
UNGASS guidance
Three Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) sessions have been held on the subject of drugs: "Drug abuse" (1990), "World drug problem" (1998), and "World drug problem" (2016). These high-level gatherings, involving heads of state and ministers, are documented usually in the form of a political declaration, an action plan, or a strategy that provide additional treaty guidance. These sessions can indicate whether the status quo will be maintained or if there is a broad openness to reform.
In March 2016, the INCB stated that the UN drug treaties do not mandate a "war on drugs" and that the choice is not between "'militarized' drug law enforcement on one hand and the legalization of non-medical use of drugs on the other", health and welfare should be the focus of drug policy. That April, at the UNGASS on the "World drug problem", the Wall Street Journal assessed the attendees' positions as "somewhat" in two camps: "Some European and South American countries as well as the U.S. favored softer approaches. Eastern countries such as China and Russia and most Muslim nations like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan remained staunchly opposed." The outcome document recommended treatment, prevention and other public health measures, and committed to "intensifying our efforts to prevent and counter" drug production and trafficking, through, "inter alia, more effective drug-related crime prevention and law enforcement measures." A statement signed by 189 civil society organizations criticized the 2016 outcome document, itemizing the lack of progress and calling out the "highly problematic, non-inclusive and non-transparent" process that made it possible for "a handful of vocal and regressive countries [to] block progressive language", resulting in "an expensive restatement of previous agreements and conventions".
Notes
References
Drug control treaties
Drug control law
Drug policy
United Nations | International drug control conventions | [
"Chemistry"
] | 5,048 | [
"Drug control law",
"Regulation of chemicals"
] |
76,987,786 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris%20Villarroel | Morris Villarroel (born ) is a Spanish academic who is professor of animal psychology at the Technical University of Madrid. He is also a lifelogger who, since 2010, has been writing what he is currently doing, his location, the food he has eaten, the time he wakes up and his ideas on paper notebooks at 15 to 30 minute intervals every day.
Logging
Since February 2010, Villarroel has been lifelogging. He does this by writing what he is currently doing and where he is located in a notebook, at intervals from about 15 to 30 minutes. He also logs the times he wakes up, the food he eats, and his ideas. He also records his movements with a fitness tracker. An example of a log entry he wrote is "I woke up at 05:45 in a hotel in Sweden. My hind leg muscles were hurting a bit." Once the notebooks fill up, he indexes them in a spreadsheet, with categories and keywords. In 2019 he estimated that he spends about an hour a day writing in his notebook.
He originally planned to do it for 10 years, as an experiment, but once 10 years was over, he decided to continue. He started logging his life with the idea that it could improve his memory and time management skills, and give him a clearer record of what he had done in his life. He has said that it makes him feel like he has lived a longer life, and says that it improves his emotional regulation. he had filled up 307 notebooks.
In April 2014 Villaroel started wearing a camera on his chest that automatically took photographs every 30 seconds, totalling about 1,200 per day. He wore it for most of the day, but took it off in private moments such as in the bedroom. Some examples of memories he has captured includes when his father died, and when his son was born. He said that while some people could be uncomfortable around the camera, most were supportive of it. He stopped using it after a few years due to difficulty keeping track of the amount of photos it took.
Personal life
Both of Villarroel's parents are psychologists. Villarroel is married, and has five children.
Selected works
See also
Quantified self
Robert Shields
References
External links
2014 talk by Villarroel on Vimeo
Academic staff of the Technical University of Madrid
Ethologists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Lifelogging | Morris Villarroel | [
"Technology",
"Biology"
] | 496 | [
"Behavior",
"Ethologists",
"Lifelogging",
"Computing and society",
"Ethology"
] |
76,987,869 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4D%20N%20%3D%201%20global%20supersymmetry | In supersymmetry, 4D global supersymmetry is the theory of global supersymmetry in four dimensions with a single supercharge. It consists of an arbitrary number of chiral and vector supermultiplets whose possible interactions are strongly constrained by supersymmetry, with the theory primarily fixed by three functions: the Kähler potential, the superpotential, and the gauge kinetic matrix. Many common models of supersymmetry are special cases of this general theory, such as the Wess–Zumino model, super Yang–Mills theory, and the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. When gravity is included, the result is described by 4D supergravity.
Background
Global supersymmetry has a spacetime symmetry algebra given by the super-Poincaré algebra with a single supercharge. In four dimensions this supercharge can be expressed either as a pair of Weyl spinors or as a single Majorana spinor. The particle content of this theory must belong to representations of the super-Poincaré algebra, known as supermultiplets. Without including gravity, there are two types of supermultiplets: a chiral supermultiplet consisting of a complex scalar field and its Majorana spinor superpartner, and a vector supermultiplet consisting of a gauge field along with its Majorana spinor superpartner.
The general theory has an arbitrary number of chiral multiplets indexed by , along with an arbitrary number of gauge multiplets indexed by . Here are complex scalar fields, are gauge fields, and and are Majorana spinors known as chiralini and gaugini, respectively. Supersymmetry imposes stringent conditions on the way that the supermultiplets can be combined in the theory. In particular, most of the structure is fixed by three arbitrary functions of the scalar fields. The dynamics of the chiral multiplets is fixed by the holomorphic superpotential and the Kähler potential , while the mixing between the chiral and gauge sectors is primarily fixed by the holomorphic gauge kinetic matrix . When such mixing occurs, the gauge group must also be consistent with the structure of the chiral sector.
Scalar manifold geometry
The complex scalar fields in the chiral supermultiplets can be seen as coordinates of a -dimensional manifold, known as the scalar manifold. This manifold can be parametrized using complex coordinates , where the barred index represents the complex conjugate . Supersymmetry ensures that the manifold is necessarily a complex manifold, which is a type of manifold that locally looks like and whose transition functions are holomorphic. This is because supersymmetry transformations map into left-handed Weyl spinors, and into right-handed Weyl spinors, so the geometry of the scalar manifold must reflect the fermion spacetime chirality by admitting an appropriate decomposition into complex coordinates.
For any complex manifold there always exists a special metric compatible with the manifolds complex structure, known as a Hermitian metric. The only non-zero components of this metric are , with a line element given by
Using this metric on the scalar manifold makes it a Hermitian manifold. The chirality properties inherited from supersymmetry imply that any closed loop around the scalar manifold has to maintain the splitting between and . This implies that the manifold has a holonomy group. Such manifolds are known as Kähler manifolds and can alternatively be defined as being manifolds that admit a two-form, known as a Kähler form, defined by
such that . This also implies that the scalar manifold is a symplectic manifold. These manifolds have the useful property that their metric can be expressed in terms of a function known as a Kähler potential through
where this function is invariant up to the addition of the real part of an arbitrary holomorphic function
Such transformations are known as Kähler transformations and since they do not affect the geometry of the scalar manifold, any supersymmetric action must be invariant under these transformations.
Coupling the chiral and gauge sectors
The gauge group of a general supersymmetric theory is heavily restricted by the interactions of the theory. One key condition arises when chiral multiplets are charged under the gauge group, in which case the gauge transformation must be such as to leave the geometry of the scalar manifold unchanged. More specifically, they leave the scalar metric as well as the complex structure unchanged. The first condition implies that the gauge symmetry belongs to the isometry group of the scalar manifold, while the second further restricts them to be holomorphic Killing symmetries. Therefore, the gauge group must be a subgroup of this symmetry group, although additional consistency conditions can restrict the possible gauge groups further.
The generators of the isometry group are known as Killing vectors, with these being vectors that preserve the metric, a condition mathematically expressed by the Killing equation , where are the Lie derivatives for the corresponding vector. The isometry algebra is then the algebra of these Killing vectors
where are the structure constants. Not all of these Killing vectors can necessarily be gauged. Rather, the Kähler structure of the scalar manifolds also demands the preservation of the complex structure , with this imposing that the Killing vectors must also be holomorphic functions . It is these holomorphic Killing vectors that define symmetries of Kähler manifolds, and so a gauge group can only be formed by gauging a subset of these.
An implication of is that there exists a set of real holomorphic functions known as Killing prepotentials which satisfy , where is the interior product. The Killing prepotentials entirely fix the holomorphic Killing vectors
Conversely, if the holomorphic Killing vectors are known, then the prepotential can be explicitly written in terms of the Kähler potential as
The holomorphic functions describe how the Kähler potential changes under isometry transformations , allowing them to be calculated up to the addition of an imaginary constant.
A key consistency condition on the prepotentials is that they must satisfy the equivariance condition
For non-abelian symmetries, this condition fixes the imaginary constants associated to the holomorphic functions , known as Fayet–Iliopoulos terms. For abelian subalgebras of the gauge algebra, the Fayet–Iliopoulos terms remain unfixed since these have vanishing structure constants.
Lagrangian
The derivatives in the Lagrangian are covariant with respect to the symmetries under which the fields transform, these being the gauge symmetries and the scalar manifold coordinate redefinition transformations. The various covariant derivatives are given by
where the hat indicates that the derivative is covariant with respect to gauge transformations. Here are the holomorphic Killing vectors that have been gauged, while are the scalar manifold Christoffel symbols and are the gauge algebra structure constants. Additionally, second derivatives on the scalar manifold must also be covariant . Meanwhile, the left-handed and right-handed Weyl fermion projections of the Majorana spinors are denoted by .
The general four-dimensional Lagrangian with global supersymmetry is given by
Here are the so-called D-terms. The first line is the kinetic term for the chiral multiplets whose structure is primarily fixed by the scalar metric while the second line is the kinetic term for the gauge multiplets which is instead primarily fixed by the real part of the holomorphic gauge kinetic matrix . The third line is the generalized supersymmetric theta-like term for the gauge multiplet, with this being a total derivative when the imaginary part of the gauge kinetic function is a constant, in which case it does not contribute to the equations of motion. The next line is an interaction term while the second-to-last line are the fermion mass terms given by
where is the superpotential, an arbitrary holomorphic function of the scalars. It is these terms that determine the masses of the fermions since in a particular vacuum state with scalar fields expanded around some value , then the mass matrices become fixed matrices to leading order in the scalar field. Higher order terms give rise to interaction terms between the scalars and the fermions. The mass basis will generally involve diagonalizing the entire mass matrix implying that the mass eigenbasis are generally linear combinations of the chiral and gauge fermion fields.
The last line includes the scalar potential
where the first term is called the F-term and the second is known as the D-term. Finally this line also contains the four-fermion interaction terms
with is the Riemann tensor of the scalar manifold.
Properties
Supersymmetry transformations
Neglecting three-fermion terms, the supersymmetry transformation rules that leave the Lagrangian invariant are given by
The second part of the fermion transformations, proportional to for the chiralino and for the gaugino, are referred to as fermion shifts. These dictate a lot of the physical properties of the supersymmetry model such as the form of the potential and the goldstino when supersymmetry is spontaneously broken.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
At the quantum level, supersymmetry is broken if the supercharges do not annihilate the vacuum . Since the Hamiltonian can be written in terms of these supercharges, this implies that unbroken supersymmetry corresponds to vanishing vacuum energy, while broken supersymmetry necessarily requires positive vacuum energy. In contrast to supergravity, global supersymmetry does not admit negative vacuum energies, with this being a direct consequence of the supersymmetry algebra.
In the classical approximation, supersymmetry is unbroken if the scalar potential vanishes, which is equivalent to the condition that
If any of these are non-zero, then supersymmetry is classically broken. Due to the superpotential nonrenormalization theorem, which states that the superpotential does not receive corrections at any level of quantum perturbation theory, the above condition holds at all orders of quantum perturbation theory. Only non-perturbative quantum corrections can modify the condition for supersymmetry breaking.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking of global supersymmetry necessarily leads to the presence of a massless Nambu–Goldstone fermion, referred to as a goldstino . This fermion is given by the linear combination of the fermion fields multiplied by their fermion shifts and contracted with appropriate metrics
with this being the eigenvector corresponding to the zero eigenvalue of the fermion mass matrix. The goldstino vanishes when the conditions for supersymmetry are meet, that being the vanishing of the superpotential and the prepotential.
Mass sum rules
One important set of quantities are the supertraces of powers of the mass matrices , usually expressed as a sum over all the eigenvalues modified by the spin of the state
In unbroken global supersymmetry, for all . The case is referred to as the mass sum formula, which in the special case of a trivial gauge kinetic matrix can be expressed as
showing that this vanishes in the case of a Ricci-flat scalar manifold, unless spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs through non-vanishing D-terms. For most models , even when supersymmetry is spontaneously broken. An implication of this is that the mass difference between bosons and fermions cannot be very large. The result can be generalized variously, such as for vanishing vacuum energy but a general gauge kinetic term, or even to a general formula using the superspace formalism. In the full quantum theory the masses can get additional quantum corrections so the above results only hold at tree-level.
Special cases and generalizations
A theory with only chiral multiplets and no gauge multiplets is sometimes referred to as the supersymmetric sigma model, with this determined by the Kähler potential and the superpotential. From this, the Wess–Zumino model is acquired by restricting to a trivial Kähler potential corresponding to a Euclidean metric, together with a superpotential that is at most cubic
This model has the useful property of being fully renormalizable.
If instead there are no chiral multiplets, then the theory with a Euclidean gauge kinetic matrix is known as super Yang–Mills theory. In the case of a single gauge multiplet with a gauge group, this corresponds to super Maxwell theory. Super quantum chromodynamics is meanwhile acquired using a Euclidean scalar metric, together with an arbitrary number of chiral multiplets behaving as matter and a single gauge multiplet. When the gauge group is an abelian group this is referred to a super quantum electrodynamics.
Models with extended supersymmetry arise as special cases of supersymmetry models with particular choices of multiplets, potentials, and kinetic terms. This is in contrast to supergravity where extended supergravity models are not special cases of supergravity and necessarily include additional structures that must be added to the theory.
Gauging global supersymmetry gives rise to local supersymmetry which is equivalent to supergravity. In particular, 4D N = 1 supergravity has a matter content similar with the case of global supersymmetry except with the addition of a single gravity supermultiplet, consisting of a graviton and a gravitino. The resulting action requires a number of modifications to account for the coupling to gravity, although structurally shares many similarities with the case of global supersymmetry. The global supersymmetry model can be directly acquired from its supergravity generalization through the decoupling limit whereby the Planck mass is taken to infinity .
These models are also applied in particle physics to construct supersymmetric generalizations of the Standard Model, most notably the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. This is the minimal extension of the Standard Model that is consistent with phenomenology and includes supersymmetry that is broken at some high scale.
Construction
There are a number of ways to construct a four dimensional global supersymmetric action. The most common approach is the superspace approach. In this approach, Minkowski spacetime is extended to an eight-dimensional supermanifold which additionally has four Grassmann coordinates. The chiral and vector multiplets are then packaged into fields known as superfields. The supersymmetry action is subsequently constructed by considering general invariant actions of the superfields and integrating over the Grassmann subspace to get a four-dimensional Lagrangian in Minkowski spacetime.
An alternative approach to the superspace formalism is the multiplet calculus approach. Rather than working with superfields, this approach works with multiplets, which are sets of fields on which the supersymmetry algebra is realized. Invariant actions are then constructed from these. For global supersymmetry this is more complicated than the superspace approach, although a generalized approach is very useful when constructing supergravity actions.
Notes
References
Supersymmetric quantum field theory | 4D N = 1 global supersymmetry | [
"Physics"
] | 3,140 | [
"Supersymmetric quantum field theory",
"Supersymmetry",
"Symmetry"
] |
76,987,884 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4C%20%2B71.07 | 4C +71.07 known as S5 0836+71, is a quasar located in the constellation Ursa Major. Based on its high redshift, the object is located 10.7 billion light-years away from Earth and such, classified as a blazar with a flat-spectrum radio source and features a radio jet.
Redshift estimates of 4C +71.07
Earlier redshift estimations of 4C +71.07 are calculated. In the 1993 study published by Stickel and Kuelr, the quasar is estimated to be located at z = 2.172 From its broad emission lines of C IV λ1549 and C III] λ1909, Lawrence et al. (1996), puts 4C +71.07 at z = 2.18032 while McIntosh et al. (1999), derived a systemic redshift of z = 2.218 from the [O III] λ5007 narrow line in H-band spectra.
A further detailed investigation of the spectroscopic properties of 4C +71.07 is presented by Raiteri et al. (in preparation), which researchers estimated a systemic redshift of z = 2.213 from the Balmer Hα and Hβ broad emission lines. From Stickel and Kuelr's study and by NASA/IPAC, the redshift of 4C +71.07 is confirmed at z = 2.172 based on the absorption line at ~5360 Å, which was attributed to Mg II λλ2796, 2803. This was confirmed by Scott, Bechtold & Dobrzycki (2000), who found a number of other absorbers at redshifts z = 1.4256, 1.6681, 1.7331, and 2.1800.
Characteristics
The active galactic nucleus in 4C +71.07 is known to be the brightest and farthest, so far detected above the range of 20 keV. From the BATSE Earth occultation data, searching for emissions from 4C 71.07 during nearly 3 yr of observations, the mean source flux over the whole period in the BATSE energy range is 20-100 keV is (1.32+/-0.11)x10-10 ergs cm-2 s-1, corresponding to a luminosity of 2x1048 ergs s-1. Using the BATSE light curve, 4C +71.07 shows several flarelike events, one of which (in January 1996) is associated with an optical flare (R=16.1) but with a delay of 55 days. Moreover, the optical radiation in 4C +71.07, is dominated by its quasar-like emission.
Although the source has unusually strong polarization from 21 cm (6.8%) down to 9 mm (9.5%), 4C +71.07 is classified as a low-polarization quasar (LPQ) as the polarization is only 1.1%. The quasar has a 5 GHz flux greater than 1 Jy, and has both stationary and superluminally moving components in a bright one-sided jet emerging from its core.
4C +71.07 has been monitored since 1989 in the optical band and found to display at least two flares, one in February 1992 and another in November 1995. Typically the maximum brightness in R magnitude, is around 16.116.5 with a R 1.3 from minimum to maximum. The 1992 flare may also have been detected at millimeter and centimeter frequencies, but with a delay of 0.10.5 yr. At soft X-ray energies (0.12 keV), the source underwent a flux decrease by a factor of 2 between March and November 1992, without any spectral change, implying a high flux level close to the optical flaring period; the source was still dim when reobserved by the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics in March 1995.
4C +71.07 has also been observed by EGRET on different occasions but not always detected. In particular, soon after the optical flare observed in 1992 the gamma-ray flux was also high. Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) monitoring of the source has further indicated the ejection of a new jet component shortly after the time of the gamma/X-ray/optical/radio outburst.
The gamma-ray source spectrum is among the steepest at these energies ( = 2.4). It is quite a bright source in the gamma-ray domain with a 50200 MeV flux of 1.5 × 10−10 ergs cm−2 s−1 and an isotropic luminosity of 2.2 × 1048 ergs s−1. However, the gamma radiation is likely to be beamed.
Further study on 4C +71.07
A study done by Asada et al. (2010), shows researchers inferring a Faraday rotation measure gradient from multifrequency VLBI polarimetry, suggesting a helical magnetic field for the jet of 4C +71.07. Evidences in favor of a helical jet structure, were presented also by Perucho et al. (2012a) based on very long baseline interferometry data. From the absence of a hotspot in the arcsec jet radio structure, Perucho et al. (2012a) concluded that the jet likely loses collimation and gets disrupted by the growth of helical instabilities. The conclusion from Perucho et al. (2012a), mentions that the jet likely loses collimation and gets disrupted by the growth of helical instabilities.
Another study from Akyuz et al. (2013), analyzed the multifrequency behavior of the source during both a quiescent state in 2008–2011 and an active state in 2011, finds that the γ-ray emission correlates with the optical, but not its radio emission and that the γ-ray spectrum becomes curved in active states.
Observation
Between October 27–29 and November 8–10, 2015, 4C +71.07 was detected by the AGILE gamma-ray satellite when the blazar reached a gamma-ray flux ({E}>100 MeV) of the order of 1.2 × 10^{-6} ph cm^{-2} s^{-1} and 3.1 × 10^{-6} ph cm^{-2} s^{-1}, respectively. Not to mention, 4C +71.07 shows a prominent accretion disc bump peaking in the ultra-violet band, which makes this source an excellent candidate to investigate not only the jet emission but also the non thermal one.
During 2014–2016, the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope organized a multiwavelength observing campaign to study both the beamed and unbeamed properties of 4C +71.07. The results of the optical, near-infrared, and radio observations by researchers, complemented by ultraviolet and X-ray data from the Swift satellite and γ-ray data from the Fermi satellite, are presented. They found that the spectral energy distribution shows a prominent big blue bump and a strong Compton dominance.
Researchers also calculated that the best-guess density value for the hydrogen column through the analysis of X-ray spectra, is N_H^best=6.3 × 10^{20} cm^{-2}, but found out that the light curves do not show persistent correlations among flux changes at different frequencies. Even surprising, there is no correlation between polarization degree and flux.
Similarly, wide rotations of the electric vector polarization angle for 4C +71.07 do not seem to be connected with the source activity. But is characterized by extreme nuclear and jet properties. Integration of the thermal continuum traced by our big blue bump template allows them to estimate the disc bolometric luminosity, which is Ldisc = 2.45 x 1047 ergs −1 showing the Eddington ratio, high as 0.66. A jet bolometric luminosity integrating the nuclear-subtracted SED, obtaining Ljet = 9.42 x 1049 ergs −1 ≈ (1–4) Ldisc. The disc and jet luminosities of 4C +71.07 are found to fit well into the jet–disc relation for blazars, therefore confirming it at the highest energy values.
Black hole
According to the study from Ghisellini et al. (2010), researchers estimate the supermassive black hole mass in 4C +71.07, to be 3 x 109 which is the size of 1.5 x 1018 cm, an accretion disc luminosity of 2.25 x 1047 ergs −1, with a bulk Lorentz factor of 14 at the jet dissipation radius of 5.40 x 1017 cm for a jet viewing angle of 3°.
Using the black hole mass, they were able derived an Eddington luminosity of Ledd = 2.49 x 1047 ergs −1 and an Eddington ratio Ldisc/LEdd ≈ 1, which means that the radiation and gravitational forces are of the same order. They estimated the black hole luminosity of LBLR = (1.52 + 0.14) x 1046 ergs −1, representing about 6 percent of the disc and Eddington luminosities. This identifies 4C +71.07, as one of the most luminous among the blazar nuclei.
References
Quasars
Ursa Major
Blazars
Principal Galaxies Catalogue objects
4C objects
Active galaxies | 4C +71.07 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 2,027 | [
"Ursa Major",
"Constellations"
] |
76,987,927 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface%20Pro%20%2811th%20generation%29 | </noinclude>
The Surface Pro (11th generation) (also referred to as the Surface Pro 11th Edition) is a 2-in-1 detachable tablet computer developed by Microsoft to supersede the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Pro X. It was released shortly after the Intel x86-based Surface Pro 10, and unveiled alongside the Surface Laptop (7th generation). The Surface Pro 11 introduces the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series CPUs to the Surface Pro model line, and therefore runs Windows on ARM. It is also the first Surface device with a built-in NPU designed for generative AI, via Microsoft Copilot+.
Background and reveal
Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X line of CPUs on Oct 10, 2023. Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop (7th generation) at an AI-related press event on May 20, 2024. The press release touted performance, efficiency, and battery life that would rival the Macbook Air M3, and major performance gains over the Surface Pro 9. The CPU options available are the Snapdragon X Plus with 10 cores, and the Snapdragon X Elite with 12 cores. The devices contain a Hexagon NPU for use with Microsoft Copilot+ generative AI app.
Given the mixed reception of previous Surface on ARM devices, the Snapdragon X family of CPUs sought to provide the best performance, improved battery life, and lower heat output as compared to x86 Surface devices (the latter two still considered pain points of x86 Windows mobile devices). As well as integrate generative AI features and the Hexagon NPU. ARM-native apps have also seen larger support on Windows now than ever before. With the early Surface devices running Windows RT, complaints were lodged regarding the lack of compatible apps on Windows on ARM. The Surface Pro X showed improvements, with the introduction of an x86-compatibility layer to emulate x86 apps. The Surface Pro 11E introduces a new x86 emulator known as Prism, which promises better x86 emulation performance. Presently, Microsoft claims that 90% of total app minutes that users spend in apps now have native ARM versions. Google released Chrome on ARM in 2024 (with Google Drive announced Q3 2024), and Adobe has been rolling out ARM native apps for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.
Hardware
The Surface Pro 11 is the 13th overall addition to the Surface Pro line.
Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X CPUs
Qualcomm Adreno integrated GPU (3.8 TFLOPS)
Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (45 TOPS)
Up to 1TB of SSD storage, Up to 32GB of memory
13-inch touchscreen 2880 x 1920 resolution display at 266 PPI, 3:2 aspect ratio,
and 120 Hz refresh rate, 600 nits brightness, IPS or OLED options available
Battery life rated at up to 14 hours video playback, 10 hours active web usage
IPS: 48Wh, OLED: 53Wh
2x USB-C ports with data transfer, charging, and DisplayPort 2.1
5G connectivity option available on business models
Surface Connect charging port
4K video camera support
39W power supply
Models
Microsoft Surface Pro 11 Copilot+ (IPS, Snapdragon X Plus)
• CPU: Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-64-100) • 10x Oryon @ 3.4 GHz
• GPU: Qualcomm SD X Adreno X1-85 (3.8 TFLOPS)
• Display: S-IPS 13" (3:2), 2880 x 1920 pixel (266 PPI), HDR, 120 Hz
Microsoft Surface Pro 11 Copilot+ (OLED, Snapdragon X Elite)
• CPU: Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-80-100) • 12x Oryon @ 4.0 GHz
• GPU: Qualcomm SD X Adreno X1-85 (3.8 TFLOPS)
• Display: OLED 13" (3:2), 2880 x 1920 pixel (266 PPI), HDR, 120 Hz
Software
Windows 11 includes Microsoft Copilot for AI features. Microsoft Recall, a controversial snapshot search history AI feature was disabled upon launch, and will be opt-in only once it launches. Recall was widely derided upon its reveal, citing security and privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to make it an opt-in only feature.
Release and reception
The Surface Pro 11 was released on June 18, 2024, and received generally positive reviews. Praises include great performance for regular use, greatly improved battery life, impressive design and form factor, and much improved repairability. John Loeffler of Tech Radar admitted that the SP11 vastly surpassed his own expectations from the year prior, where he scoffed at the idea of another ARM-based Surface Pro being a good idea. Loeffler cites the improved x86 emulation via ‘’Prism’’, the outstanding battery life, OLED display, and performance. He cites it as a worthy competitor to the iPad Pro. Complaints were lodged at the expensive cost of the flex keyboard and Surface Pen (for a device that already has a baseline price of $999). He also feels that the AI features are still rather gimmicky, and that there still needs to be greater adoption of ARM-native apps for the platform.
Ed Bott of ZDNET says that the SP11 has replaced his daily driver tablet after one week of trying it out. He cited how much more cooled and quiet the device is, with his x86 Surface Pro would be uncomfortably hot for after the same amount of time doing the same tasks as he was. Per the battery life, he said that his initial impressions so far coupled with the battery report, indicate that the can get about twice as much battery life than his Surface Pro 9, and on-par with his Macbook Air M2. He was also very impressed with the camera. He said that app compatibility is a mixed bag. Some x86 apps run well, others are still problematic, and that ARM-native apps are gradually rolling out. He noted that at the time of review, Google Drive and popular VPN apps like Proton VPN and ExpressVPN are still only x86, and so users of those apps may want to stick with x86-based devices. He too expressed a mixed reception over the AI features, some felt gimmicky, others added a nice touch to existing apps.
Devindra Hardawar of Engadget cites the SP11 as the best Surface Pro device ever made, in spite of the AI, which he feels is a far less compelling reason to buy the device. While he feels it is overall solid, instead, the great performance of the Snapdragon X chips, great battery life, display, and flex keyboard are the true x-factors at play. He also notes that it can get expensive quickly, and that app compatibility still has its problems.
Tom Warren of The Verge commented on Windows on ARM as a whole. He noted that the Windows on ARM experience has improved dramatically from the Surface Pro X in 2019. Noting popular apps such as Photoshop, DropBox, Spotify, Prime, Hulu, Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, Brave, and Opera are all ARM-native now. He says that after a week, he has not seen the erratic behavior that plagued previous x86 emulation on Windows on ARM, but says it does not measure up quite to Microsoft's claimed performance. Ultimately, it depends on the complexity of the app. And that Qualcomm should engage with app developers on how to best optimize the apps for the hardware, as they cannot rely on Prism to handle everything. He also states that gaming experience is lacking: Some games will not even run, others run at a particularly mid performance, and many anti-cheat software use kernel drivers that are not yet supported by emulation. He ultimately feels that ARM-native app accessibility will only improve within the coming years, and that Windows on ARM finally feels poised to succeed.
Serviceability and repairability
Microsoft has released service guides for Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7.
iFixit has given both the Surface Pro 11 Surface Laptop 7 an overall rating of 8/10 on the repairability scale. Noting the improvements over previous Surface devices, and the user-removable SSD.
Timeline
Notes
References
Tablet computers introduced in 2024
Microsoft Surface
2-in-1 PCs | Surface Pro (11th generation) | [
"Technology"
] | 1,771 | [
"Crossover devices",
"2-in-1 PCs"
] |
76,988,609 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied%20Computational%20Electromagnetics%20Society%20Journal | The Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal, also known as ACES Journal, is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published monthly by The Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society and River Publishers. It covers fundamental and applied research on computational electromagnetics. It was established in 1986 and its editors-in-chief are Sami Barmada (University of Pisa) and Atef Elsherbeni (Colorado School of Mines).
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2023 impact factor of 0.6.
References
External links
Electromagnetism journals
Monthly journals
Academic journals established in 1986
English-language journals
Open access journals
Electrical and electronic engineering journals
Computational modeling journals
Computational electromagnetics | Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal | [
"Physics",
"Engineering"
] | 151 | [
"Computational electromagnetics",
"Computational physics",
"Electronic engineering",
"Electrical engineering",
"Electrical and electronic engineering journals"
] |
76,988,789 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolayer-protected%20cluster%20molecules | Monolayer protected clusters (MPCs) are one type of nanoparticles or clusters of atoms. A single MPC contains three main parts: metallic core, protective ligand layer and metal-ligand interface between, each defined by their distinctive chemical and structural environments. The main part of a MPC is a metallic core, which can consist of a single metal or it can be a mixture of metals. Bare metal particles tend to be reactive. They usually react with environment or with other particles making larger structures. Ligand layer is used to protect them, so that the particle size is preserved. Ligands are usually some organic molecules and they are bound to metallic core via some linking atoms such as sulfur or phosphorus forming thiol and phosphine ligands. However, there are alkynyl and carbene protected MPCs, where carbon is directly bound to metal atoms. Ligand layer can consist of a single type of ligands, like in the case of thiolate-protected gold clusters, or it can contain several different molecules. Even though the ligand layer is usually used to passivate a nanoparticle, it is not a passive part of the MPCs. For example, ligands can be functionalized to work in specific applications such as binding to surfaces or acting as a carrier for other molecules. Ligand layer also contributes to the total electronic structure of the particle, which furthermore affects the superatomic nature of the particle.
In order to fully understand how MPCs work, one has to solve their atomic structures. One of the most common ways is to use X-ray crystallography. There are a large amount of these structures found but they are scattered over different sources. This article is designed to be a list of known structures of MPCs focusing on experimentally determined ones. MPCs are divided to tables according to their cores. Within the tables they are sorted according to the amount of metal atoms from smallest to largest. If there several clusters with similar core sizes, earlier published is listed first. The last table contains some structures which are partially determined experimentally and partially predicted by theoretical calculations. Every table lists the chemical formula of the MPC, the full reference to the publication and a their shortened DOI code with a link to the publication. There are three main ways to access the structure information. The first one is to go to the webpage of the original publication and see if there is supplementary information file containing the data. The second approach is to use the listed DOI and search the structure from the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) or Crystallography Open Database (COD). There one can easily download the structure, if authors have submitted their crystallographic data. Some crystal structures are published in Protein Data Bank (PDB), in which case corresponding accession code is listed after the DOI. The third option is for the situations, where two first ones don't work and the data is really needed. One can check who is the corresponding author of the publication and ask politely for the data.
Gold
Silver
Copper
Aluminium
Gallium
Germanium
Palladium
Mixed metal
Partially experimentally determined
References
External links
this work
Cluster chemistry | Monolayer-protected cluster molecules | [
"Chemistry"
] | 635 | [
"Cluster chemistry",
"Organometallic chemistry"
] |
76,988,889 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International%20Journal%20of%20Numerical%20Modelling%3A%20Electronic%20Networks%2C%20Devices%20and%20Fields | International Journal of Numerical Modelling: Electronic Networks, Devices and Fields is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published bimonthly by Wiley-Blackwell. It covers research on the applications of numerical and computational methods on electrical engineering problems, with a focus on electronic circuits and electromagnetic fields. It was established in 1988 and its editor-in-chief is Giovanni Crupi.
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2023 impact factor of 1.6.
References
External links
Wiley-Blackwell academic journals
Electromagnetism journals
Bimonthly journals
Academic journals established in 1988
English-language journals
Electrical and electronic engineering journals
Computational modeling journals | International Journal of Numerical Modelling: Electronic Networks, Devices and Fields | [
"Engineering"
] | 142 | [
"Electrical engineering",
"Electronic engineering",
"Electrical and electronic engineering journals"
] |
76,989,062 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal%20of%20Micro/Nanopatterning%2C%20Materials%2C%20and%20Metrology | Journal of Micro/Nanopatterning, Materials, and Metrology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published quarterly by SPIE. It covers science, development, and practice of micro and nanofabrication processes and metrology. Established in 2002 under the name Journal of Microlithography, Microfabrication, and Microsystems, it was subsequently retitled to Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS in 2007. The journal title was changed to its current name in 2021.
The editor-in-chief of the journal is Harry Levinson (HJL Lithography).
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2022 impact factor of 2.3.
References
External links
Quarterly journals
SPIE academic journals
Academic journals established in 2002
English-language journals
Mechanical engineering journals
Semiconductor journals
Materials science journals | Journal of Micro/Nanopatterning, Materials, and Metrology | [
"Materials_science",
"Engineering"
] | 189 | [
"Mechanical engineering journals",
"Nanotechnology journals",
"Materials science journals",
"Materials science",
"Mechanical engineering"
] |
76,989,865 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindar | Mindar (), also known as Android Kannon Mindar, is an android preacher at the Kōdai-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan. The humanoid robot regularly gives sermons on the Heart Sutra at the 400-year-old Zen Buddhist temple. It was created to represent and embody Kannon, a bodhisattva associated with compassion.
Mindar was designed through a collaboration between staff of Kōdai-ji and roboticists from Osaka University, including Hiroshi Ishiguro. Construction of the tall android began in 2017 at Osaka University's robotics laboratory. Development of the android cost (US$227,250), while the total cost of the project was (US$909,090). Mindar was unveiled to the public at a ceremony in March 2019. Its 25-minute pre-programmed sermon was written by monks and addresses the Buddhist concepts of emptiness and compassion.
Background and development
Kōdai-ji is a Zen Buddhist temple established in 1606 in the Higashiyama ward of Kyoto. It is part of the Rinzai school.
Roboticist Ishiguro Hiroshi of Osaka University visited Kōdai-ji in July 2017. Gotō Tenshō, then the temple's chief steward, suggested to Ishiguro the creation of a robotic Buddha statue. They met again two months later and initially considered having several robots discussing the Buddha's teachings, though it was determined that a single robot would be preferable from a technical standpoint. A monologue on the Heart Sutra was chosen and it was decided that the android would take the form of Kannon, a bodhisattva associated with compassion. The Lotus Sutra mentions that Kannon is capable of manifesting in various forms.
The Android Kannon Production Committee was established in September 2017 and included staff from Kōdai-ji as well as engineers from Osaka University. Ishiguro proposed that the 'Alter' model of robot be used as a prototype. The subject matter of Mindar's sermon was determined by Buddhist monks of the Rinzai school—Honda Dōryū of , Sakaida Taisen of Kennin-ji, and Unrin'in Sōseki of Reigen-in. They devised a narrative explaining the Buddhist concepts of compassion and emptiness, based on works by Hajime Nakamura and Mumon Yamada. The name 'Mindar' was proposed by Ogawa Kōhei, a roboticist at Osaka University. Mindar is not powered by artificial intelligence, though the designers originally had aspirations of endowing the android with machine-learning capabilities. Gotō said "This robot will never die; it will just keep updating itself and evolving. With AI, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles. It's changing Buddhism."
The android Kannon was constructed at a robotics laboratory at Osaka University. Ogawa Kōhei engineered the android and it was completed in February 2019. The total cost of the project was (US$909,090), though development of the android only cost (US$227,250). A traditional Buddhist ceremony was held for the android upon its introduction to the public in March 2019. The ceremony was attended by monks and included chanting, bell-ringing, and drumming.
Mindar has historical precedents that were drawn on by its designers. Mechanized Karakuri puppets were produced in Japan from the 17th century and the country's first robot, the Gakutensoku, debuted in the late 1920s and could write calligraphy, change its facial expression, and move its head and hands through an air pressure mechanism. As a religion-oriented android, Mindar was preceded by other 21st-century robots, including the Chinese chatbot Robot Monk Xian'er and Pepper (produced 2015–2021), which could be programmed to perform Buddhist funeral rites, including chanting sutras and banging drums.
Description
Mindar is a stationary, tall android, weighing . It has a slender mechatronic body made from aluminum with silicone skin covering its face, hands, and shoulders. Mindar stands on a platform and does not have working legs. It is capable of blinking and smiling, and moves its head, torso, and arms through air hydraulics. Mindar accompanies its preaching with a variety of gestures, such as joining its palms together in gasshō. A camera implanted in Mindar's left eye allows the android to give the impression of eye contact by focusing on a person. The top of Mindar's skull is exposed, showing blinking lights and wires within its cranial cavity. Similarly most of the android's body is not covered in silicone, exposing wires and servo motors. Similar to Ishiguro's telenoid robots, Mindar has an androgynous appearance. The voice has been described as feminine and soothing.
Sermons
Mindar is situated within the Kōdai-ji temple complex at Kyōka Hall. Its sermons are open to the public, and are typically given twice daily on Saturdays and Sundays.
Mindar gives a 25-minute sermon in Japanese on the Heart Sutra, addressing concepts of compassion and emptiness within Buddhism. Chinese and English subtitles are projected on the back wall of the room. In the pre-programmed sermon's introduction, a spotlight shines on Mindar, and the android begins speaking. It refers to itself as the bodhisattva, saying:
The multimedia presentation is accompanied by operatic piano music and augmented through 360-degree projection mapping, including the projection of a virtual audience on the walls of the room. Mindar interacts with members of the projected audience, answering their questions in a pre-programmed dialogue. The sermon ends with Mindar chanting the Heart Sutra.
Reception
Mindar's introduction in 2019 received international news coverage. Media coverage focused on the novelty of a robot preacher, the cost of the project, and the potential for Mindar to change perceptions about Buddhism in Japan.
Public reception of Mindar has been mixed. A survey by Osaka University found that some people found the android easy to follow, surprisingly human-like, and warm, while others said that it felt unnatural or fake, with expressions that seemed engineered. Several people who have listened to Mindar's sermon have cried, with some considering the shadow cast by the android to be the "real" Kannon. Foreigners, especially those from Western countries, have been more critical of the android. Some raised concerns that the android upset the sanctity of religion, while others likened Mindar to Frankenstein's monster.
A 2020 paper in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence discusses whether androids such as Mindar can express Buddha-nature. It concludes that Mindar could be considered an authentic incarnation of Kannon were it to become self-aware. A 2023 paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology describes a field study based on interviews with people who had heard Mindar's sermon. The paper indicates that people do not assign android preachers the same credibility as they do for human preachers. The authors conclude that the automation of religious duties would likely result in a reduction of religious commitment.
See also
Buddhism and artificial intelligence
Human–robot interaction
Japanese robotics
Notes
References
External links
Mindar at the Kōdai-ji website (in Japanese)
Humanoid robots
Robots of Japan
2019 robots
Android (robot)
Bodhisattvas
Guanyin
Buddhism and technology
Japanese Buddhist clergy
2019 establishments in Japan
Buddhism in Japan
Tourist attractions in Kyoto | Mindar | [
"Engineering"
] | 1,515 | [
"Android (robot)",
"Human–machine interaction"
] |
76,990,733 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%A4dler%20agar | Schädler agar is a nutrient-rich growth medium primarily used in microbiology for the cultivation of anaerobic bacteria. It was developed to support the growth of a wide variety of anaerobic organisms, providing a conducive environment for both fastidious and non-fastidious anaerobes. The medium contains a combination of peptones, yeast extract, and other nutrients that create an optimal growth environment. Additionally, reducing agents such as cysteine and sodium thioglycolate are included to maintain the anaerobic conditions necessary for the survival of these bacteria.
Components and preparation
Schädler agar is composed of several key ingredients that provide the necessary nutrients and environment for anaerobic bacterial growth:
Peptones: serve as a source of nitrogen and amino acids.
Yeast extract: provides vitamins, particularly B vitamins, and other growth factors.
Dextrose: a source of carbon and energy.
Sodium chloride: maintains osmotic balance.
L-Cysteine: acts as a reducing agent to create anaerobic conditions.
Sodium thioglycolate: another reducing agent that helps maintain anaerobic conditions.
Agar: a solidifying agent that provides a firm surface for bacterial growth.
Preparation
Mixing: all dry ingredients are measured and mixed together.
Dissolving: the mixture is dissolved in distilled water with constant stirring.
Sterilization: the solution is sterilized by autoclaving at 121°C for 15 minutes.
Cooling and pouring: after autoclaving, the medium is allowed to cool to approximately 45-50°C and then poured into sterile petri dishes.
Solidification: the medium is left to solidify at room temperature before use.
Medical applications
Schädler agar is extensively used in clinical laboratories for the isolation and identification of anaerobic bacteria from clinical specimens. Its applications include:
Identification of bacteria: it is employed to isolate and cultivate anaerobes from various clinical specimens, including blood, tissue, and body fluids, aiding in the diagnosis of infections such as abscesses, bacteremia, and peritonitis.
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing: Schädler agar can be used in conjunction with other tests to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility of anaerobic bacteria, guiding appropriate antibiotic therapy.
Research: it is also valuable in microbiological research for studying the physiology and pathogenicity of anaerobic bacteria, contributing to a better understanding of these organisms and their role in human health and disease.
References
Biochemistry detection reactions
Microbiological media | Schädler agar | [
"Chemistry",
"Biology"
] | 530 | [
"Biochemistry detection reactions",
"Microbiology equipment",
"Biochemical reactions",
"Microbiology techniques",
"Microbiological media"
] |
76,991,338 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal%20of%20Optical%20Communications%20and%20Networking | Journal of Optical Communications and Networking is a peer-reviewed scientific journal co-published monthly by Optica and IEEE. It covers advances in optical networking. Established in 2002 under the name Journal of Optical Networking, it was subsequently retitled to its current name in 2009. The editor-in-chief of the journal is Andrew Lord.
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2023 impact factor of 4.0.
References
External links
Optica (society) academic journals
Optical Communications and Networking, Journal of
Optics journals
English-language journals
Monthly journals
Academic journals established in 2002
Telecommunications engineering journals
Optical communications | Journal of Optical Communications and Networking | [
"Engineering"
] | 137 | [
"Optical communications",
"Telecommunications engineering journals",
"Telecommunications engineering"
] |
76,991,831 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan%20Milner | Susan F. Milner is a retired Canadian mathematics educator known for her work encouraging public appreciation of mathematics through secondary school outreach programs and contests, programs for the public, and publications on recreational mathematics and mathematical puzzles and games. She is a professor emerita of mathematics and statistics at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Education and career
Milner has a B.A. in classics and philosophy and a B.S. in mathematics from Bishop's University in Quebec. She earned a master's degree from McMaster University, in 1986, with a master's thesis concerning logic and topos theory supervised by Bernhard Banaschewski.
After her master's degree, she began teaching at Okanagan College in British Columbia, initially planning to remain there only for a year before returning to graduate study. Instead she continued teaching mathematics in BC for 29 years, three at Okanagan and 26 at the University of the Fraser Valley. She retired in 2015 as a professor emerita at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Beyond her campus, Milner also headed the BC Committee on Undergraduate Programs in Mathematics and Statistics from 2002 to 2008.
Outreach activities
Milner's interest in recreational mathematics began with the creation of puzzle handouts for students who finished the required work in her university courses early.
She ran a secondary-school mathematics contest at the University of the Fraser Valley for 11 years, and she and a team of student volunteers have led "Math Mania" activities at dozens of secondary schools in the Fraser Valley. She has also brought puzzle and game workshops to both primary and secondary schools through the Science World Scientists & Innovators in the Schools program.
Recognition
Milner was the 2014 recipient of the PIMS Education Prize of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences.
References
External links
Susan's Math Games, Milner's web site
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Canadian mathematicians
Canadian women mathematicians
Mathematics educators
Recreational mathematicians
Bishop's University alumni
McMaster University alumni
Academic staff of the University of the Fraser Valley | Susan Milner | [
"Mathematics"
] | 409 | [
"Recreational mathematics",
"Recreational mathematicians"
] |
76,993,139 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain-Portugal%20comet%20fragment | On 18 May 2024, a fragment of a comet was spotted in the sky 60km above Spain and Portugal. The comet was estimated to have been traveling at 162,000 kilometers per hour. The comet was not detected before the event occurred.
References
Atmospheric entry
May 2024 events in Spain
May 2024 events in Portugal | Spain-Portugal comet fragment | [
"Astronomy",
"Engineering"
] | 66 | [
"Aerospace engineering",
"Atmospheric entry",
"Astronomy stubs",
"Comet stubs"
] |
76,994,474 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter%20Maarten%20de%20Wolff | Pieter Maarten de Wolff (23 July 1919 – 10 April 1998), or Pim de Wolff was a Dutch physicist, crystallographer, and professor at Delft University of Technology. He was one of the founders of N-dimensional crystallography together with Ted Janssen and Aloysio Janner.
Education and career
De Wolff was born in the Dutch East Indies as the youngest of four children. His father was Maarten de Wolff, a civil engineering engineer, and his mother was Hermine Elizabeth van Vliet. From 1929 the family lived in Medan, Sumatra, where he went to school. In 1932 they returned to the Netherlands and he went to the Hogere Burgerschool in The Hague.
He studied physics at Delft University of Technology in 1936, where he studied X-ray powder diffraction in his graduation research. He obtained his engineering degree in 1941, during Nazi Germany's occupation of the Netherlands, just before the Nazis closed the college in Delft. Unable to continue his studies, de Wolff, through the intercession of Henk Dorgelo, went to work at the Technical Physics Department of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. In 1951 de Wolff obtained his PhD from Henk Dorgelo with a thesis entitled Contributions to the theory and practice of quantitative determinations by the X-ray powder diffraction method.
In 1958 de Wolff became professor of theoretical and applied physics at the Delft University of Technology, a position he held until his retirement in 1984. He was chairman of the Applied Physics Department (1971–1973) and of the Physics Practicum department (1974–1980). He also chaired the Committee on the Nomenclature of Symmetry at the International Union of Crystallography.
Honors and awards
De Wolff's honors include receiving the Gilles Holst Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for the Guinier–de Wolff Camera in 1976, the Abraham Gottlob Werner Medal of the German Mineralogical Society in 1986, and a distinguished fellowship award from the International Center for Diffraction Data in 1994. He received the Gregori Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1998. He was too ill to go to Stockholm to receive the medal from the Swedish king. He died ten days later.
References
1919 births
1998 deaths
Dutch physicists
Crystallographers
Delft University of Technology alumni
Academic staff of the Delft University of Technology
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
People from Bandung | Pieter Maarten de Wolff | [
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science"
] | 508 | [
"Crystallographers",
"Crystallography"
] |
69,487,817 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO%20international%20days | World Days or International Days observed at UNESCO designated by United Nations General Assembly for marking and commemorating "important aspects of human life and history".
January
14 January - World Logic Day
24 January -
International Day of Education
World Day for African and Afrodescendant Culture
27 January - International Holocaust Remembrance Day
February
11 February - International Day of Women and Girls in Science
13 February - World Radio Day
21 February - International Mother Language Day
March
4 March - World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development
8 March - International Women’s Day
14 March - International Day of Mathematics
20 March - International Francophonie Day
21 March -
World Poetry Day
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
International Day of Nowruz
22 March - World Water Day
April
5 April - International Day of Conscience
6 April - International Day of Sport for Development and Peace
15 April - World Art Day
23 April - World Book and Copyright Day
29 April - International Dance Day
30 April - International Jazz Day
May
3 May - World Press Freedom Day
5 May -
African World Heritage Day
World Portuguese Language Day
16 May -
International Day of Light
International Day of Living Together in Peace
20 May - World Metrology Day since 2023
21 May - World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development since 2002
22 May - International Day for Biological Diversity
24 May - International day of Markhor since 2024
June
5 June - World Environment Day
5 June - Solomon Memorial Day
8 June - World Oceans Day
17 June - World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought
July
7 July - Kiswahili Language Day
18 July - Nelson Mandela International Day
20 July - International chess day
26 July - International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem
August
9 August - International Day of the World's Indigenous People
12 August - International Youth Day
23 August - International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition
September
8 September - International Literacy Day
9 September - International Day to Protect Education from Attack
15 September - International Day of Democracy
20 September - International Day of University Sport
21 September - International Day of Peace
28 September - International Day for the Universal Access to Information
October
5 October - World Teachers' Day
6 October - International Geodiversity Day
11 October - International Day of the Girl Child
13 October - International Day for Disaster Reduction
17 October - International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
24 October - United Nations Day
27 October - World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
November
First Thursday of November- International Day Against Violence and Bullying at School including Cyberbullying
2 November - International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists
3 November - International Day for Biosphere Reserves
5 November -
World Day of Romani Language
World Tsunami Awareness Day
10 November - World Science Day for Peace and Development
Third Thursday of November - World Philosophy Day
14 November - International Day against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property
16 November - International Day for Tolerance
18 November - International Day of Islamic Art
25 November - International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
26 November - World Olive Tree Day
29 November - International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
December
1 December - World AIDS Day
2 December - World Futures Day
3 December - International Day of Persons with Disabilities
10 December - Human Rights Day
18 December -
International Migrants Day
World Arabic Language Day
See also
List of environmental dates
List of food days
Lists of holidays
List of holidays by country
References
External links
International Days
National Health Observances (NHO), United States
UK awareness days calendar
United Nations Observances Calendar
UNESCO International Days
Calendars
United Nations days
Lists of observances
Lists of days | UNESCO international days | [
"Physics"
] | 703 | [
"Spacetime",
"Calendars",
"Physical quantities",
"Time"
] |
69,488,173 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korkine%E2%80%93Zolotarev%20lattice%20basis%20reduction%20algorithm | The Korkine–Zolotarev (KZ) lattice basis reduction algorithm or Hermite–Korkine–Zolotarev (HKZ) algorithm is a lattice reduction algorithm.
For lattices in it yields a lattice basis with orthogonality defect at most , unlike the bound of the LLL reduction. KZ has exponential complexity versus the polynomial complexity of the LLL reduction algorithm, however it may still be preferred for solving multiple closest vector problems (CVPs) in the same lattice, where it can be more efficient.
History
The definition of a KZ-reduced basis was given by Aleksandr Korkin and Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev in 1877, a strengthened version of Hermite reduction. The first algorithm for constructing a KZ-reduced basis was given in 1983 by Kannan.
The block Korkine-Zolotarev (BKZ) algorithm was introduced in 1987.
Definition
A KZ-reduced basis for a lattice is defined as follows:
Given a basis
define its Gram–Schmidt process orthogonal basis
and the Gram-Schmidt coefficients
, for any .
Also define projection functions
which project orthogonally onto the span of .
Then the basis is KZ-reduced if the following holds:
is the shortest nonzero vector in
For all ,
Note that the first condition can be reformulated recursively as stating that is a shortest vector in the lattice, and is a KZ-reduced basis for the lattice .
Also note that the second condition guarantees that the reduced basis is length-reduced (adding an integer multiple of one basis vector to another will not decrease its length); the same condition is used in the LLL reduction.
Notes
References
Theory of cryptography
Computational number theory
Lattice points | Korkine–Zolotarev lattice basis reduction algorithm | [
"Mathematics"
] | 349 | [
"Lattice points",
"Computational mathematics",
"Computational number theory",
"Number theory"
] |
69,489,005 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly%20Guirard | Beverly Marie Guirard was a microbiologist who worked on the biochemistry of microbial growth, especially with respect to vitamin B6. She is also known for her work defining the components of coenzyme A which was a part of the research that led to a Nobel Prize for Fritz Albert Lipmann.
Education and career
Guirard grew up in Louisiana and went to high school in St. Martinville, Louisiana. Guirard received a B.S. from Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1936, and a masters degree from Louisiana State University in 1938. She went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1945 where she worked on lactic acid bacteria and their conversion of acetate into lipids and steroidal material, research which built upon Esmond Emerson Snell's earliest work that identified acetate as a key factor leading to reliable growth of microorganisms. After her Ph.D. she remained at the University of Texas, where she joined Snell's lab in 1951. She moved with the lab to the University of California, Berkeley in 1956, and then returned to Texas in 1976 where she worked until her retirement in 1990.
Research
Guirard is known for her research into the biochemical compounds determining microbial growth, especially vitamins and amino acids. Her early research determined how to isolate vitamins from tissue extracts. During her Ph.D, Guirard established how acetate stimulated growth of the bacteria Lactobacillus casei. She went on to use bacteria to determine the levels of amino acids inside cells, and worked with Robert Wagner on synthesis of pantothenic acid in his model system of the fungus Neurospora.
Guirard worked with Fritz Albert Lipmann who won the 1953 Nobel Prize for the discovery of coenzyme A. During the research that led to the discovery of coenzyme A, Lipmann used pig liver's as a source for the coenzyme. As Lipmann and others have described, Guirard examined this material and discovered that the vitamin pantothenic acid only appeared after extended enzymatic activity. She confirmed this observation by hydrolyzing the coenzyme into adenylic acid and Β-alanine and thereby demonstrating that the vitamin pantothenic acid was a part of the coenzyme; this work was published with Lipmann, Nathan Kaplan, Constance Tuttle, and G. David Novelli in 1947. A second publication provided more details on how to prepare coenyzme A with details on its vitamin content and structure. Later, Kaplan detailed Guirard's experiments and noted her repeated investigations into the samples she received, and how it was only through her extended curiosity that she was able to identify the presence of pantothenic acid within conenzyme A. Lipmann also describes Guirard's expertise in finding pantothenic acid in tissue extracts, and how this led to the observation that an enzyme removed pantothenic acid from coenzyme A. In 1953, Lipmann reviewed the chemistry and function of coenyzme A and he noted it was 'through [Guirard]'s skillful observations that pantothenic acid was detected in the coenzyme".
Guirard was a long-time associate of Esmond Emerson Snell, and was a part of the team that discovered the different forms of vitamin B6. Her work in this realm included investigations into enzymes including ornithine decarboxylase and histidine decarboxylase. She established the amino acids, vitamins, or combination of amino acids and vitamins required for microbial growth. She also used microbial growth as an assay to determine the effectiveness of anti-tumor agents, and examined the role of polyamines such as spermine and spermidine on cell growth.
Selected publications
Personal life
The Beverly Guirard endowment at the University Catholic Center in Austin, Texas was established in honor of Guirard.
References
Louisiana State University alumni
University of Texas at Austin alumni
University of Texas at Austin faculty
Women microbiologists
Women biochemists
2006 deaths | Beverly Guirard | [
"Chemistry"
] | 832 | [
"Biochemists",
"Women biochemists"
] |
69,489,423 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemmatimonas | Gemmatimonas is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, motile and non-spore-forming genus of bacteria from the family of Gemmatimonaceae.
Phylogeny
The currently accepted taxonomy is based on the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN) and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
See also
List of bacterial orders
List of bacteria genera
References
Further reading
Gemmatimonadota | Gemmatimonas | [
"Biology"
] | 93 | [
"Bacteria stubs",
"Bacteria"
] |
69,490,104 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemmatimonas%20groenlandica | Gemmatimonas groenlandica is a bacterium species from the genus of Gemmatimonas which has been isolated from a stream in Zackenberg Valley, Greenland.
This species was isolated using a culturomics strategy using a mass spectroscopy-based high-throughput profiling method, along with a rapid screening technique for chlorophototrophs.
The species is an aerobic anoyxgenic photohetertroph; it is the first one of its kind isolated from this phylum. It can also be easily cultured in a liquid medium under fully aerobic conditions. Conversely, growth was not observed under photoautotrophic and chemoautotrophic conditions. Additionally, the species was not observed to ferment under anaerobic conditions. The cells were visualized utilizing scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy; they were found to exist as short to long rods, reproducing by binary fission and occasional budding. The cells were sensitive to neomycin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, and amphotericin B, but possessed antibiotic resistance to bacitracin, chloramphenicol, and nystatin.
Molecular data to date has indicated that chlorophototrophic Gemmatimonadetes bacteria can be found in a wide variety of environments (e.g. soils, lakes, rivers, biofilms, plant surfaces), with the exception of marine environments. However, sampling complexities and the prevailing perception of low activities of phototrophic bacteria in Arctic conditions have left CGBs grossly understudied. The ease with which Gemmatimonas groenlandica can now be cultured, which researchers have attributed to Greenland's cold low-biomass environment and their employment of antibiotics throughout initial enrichment, allows for more detailed physiological studies of this novel model microorganism and possible strain genetic engineering in the future.
References
Gemmatimonadota
Bacteria described in 2020 | Gemmatimonas groenlandica | [
"Biology"
] | 410 | [
"Bacteria stubs",
"Bacteria"
] |
69,490,190 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemmatimonas%20phototrophica | Gemmatimonas phototrophica is an aerobic, anoxygenic and chlorophotoheterotroph bacterium species from the genus of Gemmatimonas.
References
Further reading
Qian, Pu; Gardiner, Alastair T.; Šímová, Ivana; Naydenova, Katerina; Croll, Tristan I.; Jackson, Philip J.; Nupur; Kloz, Miroslav; Čubáková, Petra; Kuzma, Marek; Zeng, Yonghui (2022-02-18). "2.4-Å structure of the double-ring Gemmatimonas phototrophica photosystem". Science Advances. 8 (7): eabk3139. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abk3139. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 8849296. PMID 35171663.
Gemmatimonadota
Bacteria described in 2015 | Gemmatimonas phototrophica | [
"Biology"
] | 202 | [
"Bacteria stubs",
"Bacteria"
] |
69,490,426 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upacicalcet | Upacicalcet is a drug used to treat secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) - a disease of the parathyroid gland - in dialysis patients. It was approved as Upasita in Japan in June 2021. The drug is given intravenously. The active ingredient is used in the form of its sodium salt.
Mechanism of action
Upacicalcet is a calcimimetic, a substance which acts at the calcium sensing receptor of parathyroid cells and thereby inhibiting parathyroid hormone secretion. Parathyroid hormone regulates the calcium concentration in the blood plasma to maintain calcium homeostasis in the body tissues ("calcium balance").
Clinical studies
Efficacy and safety were investigated in a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study in 154 SHPT patients. Upacicalcet or placebo was given three times a week at the end of hemodialysis. The doses were then adjusted every three weeks during the 24-week treatment period in order to maintain the serum level of intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) in the concentration range recommended by the Japanese guideline. The primary endpoint was the percentage of patients who achieved mean iPTH levels of 60–240 pg/ml by weeks 22–24.
The primary endpoint for upacicalcet was significantly higher than for placebo (67.0% vs. 8.0%). Upacicalcet significantly reduced the iPTH and cCa values (corrected calcium levels) compared to placebo. No statistically significant difference between the groups was observed for serum phosphate, but it tended to decrease in that in the upacicalcet group. Hypocalcemia did not occur in either group.
References
2,3-Diaminopropionic acids
Sulfonic acids
Ureas
Chloroarenes | Upacicalcet | [
"Chemistry"
] | 389 | [
"Organic compounds",
"Sulfonic acids",
"Functional groups",
"Ureas"
] |
69,490,438 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalibrary%20%28nanotech%29 | In nanotechnology, a megalibrary is an assembly of millions of nanostructures. Its contents vary by size, composition, and shape. A single megalibrary may contain more new inorganic materials than have been synthesized and characterized to date.
Design
Megalibraries are typically stored on 2 cm x 2 cm chips, each holding millions of structures. They have been described as analogous to gene chips. The chips are prepared by using a cantilever-free lithography method to deposit the nanoreactors on the substrate. Parallel polymer pen lithography (PPL) can be combined with an ink spray-coating method to create pen arrays, where each pen has a different, but deliberately chosen quantity and composition of ink.
To synthesize metallic nanoparticles, this ink would consist of a block copolymer named poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(2-vinylpyridine) (PEO-b-P2VP) , which has metal ions dissolved inside which eventually form the nanoparticles. Each pen deposits a small dot of ink onto the substrate, so that millions of dots in total are deposited on the substrate. Afterwards, the substrate with the deposited inks is slowly heated while being exposed to hydrogen and argon gas, in a process called thermal annealing. This allows the PEO-b-P2VP to decompose away while the dissolved metal ions in each dot of ink stick together and form a nanoparticle. This method of using polymer pen lithography with PEO-b-P2VP inks is also known as scanning probe block copolymer lithography (SPBCL), and can be used to create megalibraries of metallic nanoparticles with varying compositions and sizes.
Through SPBCL, nanoparticles consisting of as many as 7 different elements can be synthesized. In nanoparticles with multiple elements, there may be separate regions containing different crystal structures and compositions, the boundary between which is called an interface. Nanoparticles with as many as 6 interfaces have been synthesized with SPBCL.
Applications
Megalibraries have identified catalysts for use in the clean energy, automotive and chemical industries, and researchers are exploring new ways to expand their applications. When the nanoparticles in a megalibrary are first synthesized, their properties, such as crystal structure and chemical composition, may be unknown. Oftentimes, it is necessary to determine these properties to determine which nanoparticles would also be suitable for a particular application. Methods to do this would need to be very efficient, because a megalibrary can contain millions of nanoparticles to be analyzed.
One family of methods that are being researched consist of using electron microscopy to analyze the nanoparticles. Artificial intelligence techniques can be used in combination to do this. For example, neural networks can be used to automatically locate nanoparticles of interest under a microscope. After locating the nanoparticles, methods like EDS can be used to determine their composition.
Electron diffraction patterns of the nanoparticles can also be acquired to determine their crystal symmetries. For example, researchers have developed neural networks that use diffraction patterns to predict the crystal systems of nanoparticles.
To determine catalytic performance of the nanoparticles, it is also sometimes possible to directly use the nanoparticles to catalyze a reaction, and then measure the change in the amount of products or reactants afterwards to determine the catalytic effectiveness of different nanoparticles in the megalibrary. For example, nanoparticles’ abilities to catalyze growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes in a nanoparticle megalibrary can be determined by Raman spectroscopy. Researchers have also identified nanoparticle catalysts for the degradation of rhodamine B, a dye that has been linked to cancer, by using fluorescence confocal microscopy to visualize the extent of degradation for different nanoparticles.
Aside from catalysis, megalibraries have also been used to discover materials with desired optical properties. For example, researchers have demonstrated the use of photoluminescence spectroscopy to identify blue photoemitters in a megalibrary of perovskite nanocrystals.
References
External links
Nanomaterials | Megalibrary (nanotech) | [
"Materials_science"
] | 906 | [
"Nanotechnology",
"Nanomaterials"
] |
69,493,286 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy | Entomophagy (, from Greek ἔντομον , 'insect', and φαγεῖν , 'to eat') is the practice of eating insects. An alternative term is insectivory. Terms for organisms that practice entomophagy are entomophage and insectivore.
Entomophagy is sometimes defined to also include the eating of arthropods other than insects, such as arachnids and myriapods; eating arachnids may also be referred to as arachnophagy.
In non-humans
Entomophagy is widespread among many animals, including non-human primates. Animals that feed primarily on insects are called insectivores.
Insects, nematodes and fungi that obtain their nutrition from insects are sometimes termed entomophagous, especially in the context of biological control applications. These may also be more specifically classified into predators, parasites or parasitoids, while viruses, bacteria and fungi that grow on or inside insects may also be termed entomopathogenic (see also entomopathogenic fungi).
In humans
Entomophagy is scientifically described as widespread among non-human primates and common among many human communities. The scientific term describing the practice of eating insects by humans is anthropo-entomophagy. The eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults of certain insects have been eaten by humans from prehistoric times to the present day. Around 3,000 ethnic groups practice entomophagy. Human insect-eating (anthropo-entomophagy) is common to cultures in most parts of the world, including Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Eighty percent of the world's nations eat insects of 1,000 to 2,000 species. FAO has registered some 1,900 edible insect species and estimates that there were, in 2005, some two billion insect consumers worldwide. FAO suggests eating insects as a possible solution to environmental degradation caused by livestock production.
In some societies, primarily western nations, entomophagy is uncommon or taboo. Today, insect eating is uncommon in North America and Europe, but insects remain a popular food elsewhere, and some companies are trying to introduce insects as food into Western diets. A recent analysis of Google Trends data showed that people in Japan have become increasingly interested in entomophagy since 2013.
See also
Insects as feed
Human interactions with insects
Insects in medicine
Insects as food
Taboo food and drink
References
Further reading
External links
Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security
Risk profile related to production and consumption of insects as food and feed European Food Safety Authority 2015
Ethology
Carnivory | Entomophagy | [
"Biology"
] | 568 | [
"Behavior",
"Ethology",
"Behavioural sciences",
"Carnivory",
"Eating behaviors"
] |
69,494,053 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribovoltaic%20effect | The tribovoltaic effect is a type of triboelectric current where a direct-current (DC) current is generated by sliding a P-type semiconductor on top of a N-type semiconductor or a metal surface without the illumination of photons, which was firstly proposed by Wang et al. in 2019 and later observed experimentally in 2020. When a P-type semiconductor slides over a N-type semiconductor, electron-hole pairs can be produced at the interface, which separate in the built-in electric field (contact potential difference) at the semiconductor interface, generating a DC current. Research has shown that the tribovoltaic effect can occur at various interfaces, such as metal-semiconductor interface, P-N semiconductors interface, metal-insulator-semiconductor interface, metal-insulator-metal interface, and liquid-semiconductor interface. The tribovoltaic effect may find applications in the fields of energy harvesting and smart sensing.
Nomenclature
It has been suggested that the generation of tribo-current at the sliding PN junction or Schottky junction is analogous to the generation of photo-current in the photovoltaic effect, and the only difference is that the energy for exciting the electron-hole pairs is different, so it was named “tribovoltaic effect” by Wang et al.
Experimental evidence
The tribovoltaic effect was observed at both macro- and nano-scale. It was found that a direct current can be generated by sliding the N-type diamond coated tip over the P-type Si samples, and the direction of the tribo-current depends on the direction of the built-in electric field at the PN and Schottky junctions.
Tribovoltaic effect at different interfaces
Metal-semiconductor interface. When a Pt-coated silicon atomic force microscopy (AFM) tip rubs on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) surface, a DC current with a maximum density of 106 A/m2 is generated. Similarly using a pure Pt tip to rub both p-type and N-type silicon samples, the current follows the contact potential.
P-N semiconductors interface. When using a N-type silicon to rub with a P-type Si, a DC current from the P-type Si to the N-type silicon is produced, with the same direction as the built-in electric field at the PN junction. Furthermore, when a N-type diamond-coated silicon tip is used to rub with the surfaces of N-type silicon and P-type Si, tribocurrent can be generated at the interfaces of N-type tip and P-type Si.
Metal-insulator-semiconductor interface. When a conducting tip rubs with a silicon, the tribovoltaic effect can induce water molecules to form an oxide layer on the silicon surface, and the tribo-current decreases gradually with increasing the thickness of oxide layer.
Metal-insulator-metal interface. The studies of DC output characteristics of Al-TiO2-Ti heterojunctions show that the open-circuit voltage increases with increasing the thickness of TiO2, while the short-circuit current first increases and then decreases. The experiments have revealed that the tribo-current is contributed by quantum tunneling, thermionic emission and trap-assisted transport.
Liquid-semiconductor interface. The tribovoltaic effect can also occur at aqueous solution and solid semiconductor interface, in which the aqueous solution is considered as a liquid semiconductor. The tribovoltaic effect at liquid-solid interface was also observed by Wang et al.
References
Electrical phenomena
Electrostatics
Electricity
Tribology | Tribovoltaic effect | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science",
"Engineering"
] | 752 | [
"Tribology",
"Physical phenomena",
"Materials science",
"Surface science",
"Electrical phenomena",
"Mechanical engineering"
] |
69,494,267 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esprit%20Systems | Esprit Systems Inc. was a vendor of computer terminal products created as a spin-off from Hazeltine Corporation's terminal division in January 1983. The name refers to the Hazeltine Esprit terminal, which division management felt the parent company was not properly marketing. The company sold a variety of terminals, adding other computer peripherals with their purchase of Percom in 1984. The new company quickly ran into financial difficulty and sold 49% of the company to its primary Taiwanese manufacturer, ADI Corporation, in March 1986, followed by a majority of purchase by ADI in 1988. By the early 2000s, their primary products were Windows CE-based thin client terminals. The last updates to the company web page were in 2003.
1983 establishments in New York (state)
2003 disestablishments in New York (state)
American companies established in 1983
American companies disestablished in 2003
Computer companies established in 1983
Computer companies disestablished in 2003
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer companies based in New York (state)
Defunct computer hardware companies
Thin clients
References
External links
Esprit Systems original website
Esprit Systems Display Terminals | Esprit Systems | [
"Technology"
] | 230 | [
"Computing stubs",
"Computer company stubs"
] |
69,494,547 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid%20electric%20double%20layer | The Hybrid electric double layer (Hybrid EDL) is a model to describe the formation of electric double layer considering the contribution of electron transfer at liquid-solid interface, which is firstly proposed by Wang et al. in 2018.The major difference between the hybrid EDL model and the traditional EDL model is that the hybrid EDL model considers that there are both electrons and ions on the solid surface in the EDL, while the traditional EDL model considers that the solid surface has only adsorbed ions.
Nomenclature
The Hybrid EDL is also named after Prof. Zhong Lin Wang (Wang model), who proposed it in 2018.
The "two-step" formation process
The formation of the Hybrid EDL can be described by the "two-step" processes. In the first step, the molecules and ions in the liquid impact the solid surface due to the thermal motion and the pressure from the liquid, while the overlap of the electron clouds of the solid atoms and water molecules leads to the electron transfer between them. Then, due to liquid flow or turbulence, the liquid molecules that are adjacent to the solid surface can be pushed off of the interface.
Experimental evidence
The key difference between the Hybrid EDL model and traditional EDL model is whether the electron transfer at liquid-solid interface exists. The electron transfer was verified experimentally at both nano-scale and macro-scale. At nanoscale, it was found that the charges on the solid surface generated by contacting with the liquid can be removed by heating, and the decay of the surface charge density consistent with the thermionic emission theory, suggesting the existence of the electron transfer at liquid-solid interface. At macroscale, it was noticed that the amount of transferred charge on the solid surface is much greater than the number of ions in the liquid that may by adsorbed to the surface, which also implies that the electron transfer play a dominant role in liquid-solid contact electrification (CE).
The solid surface charge density in EDL
In the Hybrid EDL, the surface charge density (electrons and ions) in the liquid-solid CE is not as dense as that appearing in text book drawing. For example, the experiments suggest that highest transferred electron density is −630 mCm−2 in the CE between SiO2 and DI water.
References
Surfaces
Capacitors | Hybrid electric double layer | [
"Physics"
] | 473 | [
"Capacitance",
"Capacitors",
"Physical quantities"
] |
69,494,607 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MET%C4%B0%20%28EOD%20vehicle%29 | METİ, in capitalized form short for (), literally land mine and improvised explosive device detection and disposal vehicle, is a wheeled armored explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) vehicle. It was developed in Turkey and manufactured by the BMC Turkey. Introduced in 2021, it is in use by the Turkish Army.
METİ vehicle
Developed for the needs of the Turkish Army for land mine and improvised explosive device disposal, the four-wheel armored vehicle carries nine personnel. It has hydraulic jacks for stabilization, and is capable of high protection against ballistic missiles and mines, electronic countermeasure of radio and radar jamming as well as fire extinguishing. A camera enables surveillanceof places difficult to access. The robotic arm mounted on the can be operated from inside the vehicle and also remotely from the vehicle to grab and hold items in inaccessible places. With the help of variouse attachments. The robotic arm can perform various functions, such as to detect hiden cables, break hard ground with air hammer, soften soil with harrow, remove earth with loader bucket and cut cables with cutter. Manufactured by the BMC Turkey, it entered service in the Turkish Army early December 2021.
METİ teams
Established in 2016, the METİ reams are a formation of the Gendarmerie General Command. As of 2020, 70 officers, 635 non-commissioned officers, 875 specialist gendarmerie personnel and 345 specialists were trained in praxis in six-week courses . The 145 METİ team personnel disposed 1,675 explosive ordnance in Turkey so far.
References
BMC (Turkey) vehicles
Military vehicles of Turkey
Bomb disposal
Infantry fighting vehicles of Turkey
Wheeled military vehicles
Turkish Land Forces
Military vehicles introduced in the 2020s | METİ (EOD vehicle) | [
"Chemistry"
] | 348 | [
"Explosion protection",
"Bomb disposal"
] |
69,494,736 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%20phenolate | Aluminium phenolate is the metalloorganic compound with the formula [Al(OC6H5)3]n. It is a white solid. 27Al NMR studies suggest that aluminium phenolate exists in benzene solution as a mixture of dimer and trimer. The compound is can be prepared by the reaction of elemental aluminium with phenol:
Al + 3 HOC6H5 → Al(OC6H5)3 + 1.5 H2
The compound is used as a catalyst for the alkylation of phenols with various alkenes. For example, the ethylphenols are generated commercially by treating phenol with ethylene in the presence of a catalytic amount of aluminium phenolate.
Related compounds
Aluminium isopropoxide
References
Phenolates
Aluminium compounds | Aluminium phenolate | [
"Chemistry"
] | 171 | [
"Phenolates",
"Salts"
] |
69,494,848 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminomonas | Aminomonas is a genus of bacteria from the family of Synergistaceae with one known species (Aminomonas paucivorans). Aminomonas paucivorans has been isolated from an anaerobic lagoon of a dairy wastewater treatment plant.
See also
List of bacteria genera
List of bacterial orders
References
Synergistota
Bacteria genera
Monotypic bacteria genera | Aminomonas | [
"Biology"
] | 76 | [
"Bacteria stubs",
"Bacteria"
] |
69,495,708 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parcel%20locker | A parcel locker is an automated postal box that allows users for a self-service collection of parcels and oversize letters as well as the dispatch of parcels.
Amazon Locker
Amazon Locker is a self-service package delivery service of parcel lockers offered by online retailer Amazon. Amazon customers can select any Locker location as their delivery address and retrieve their orders at that location by entering a unique pick-up code on the Locker touch screen. However, certain third-party sellers on Amazon may not be able to ship to an Amazon Locker, due to their use of other shipping services such as FedEx or UPS that require a signature. There are several sizes, but when ordering, amazon.com reports some parcels are too big to be delivered to a locker.
The Amazon Locker program was launched in September 2011 in New York City, Seattle, and London. As of June 2018, Lockers were available in over 2,800 locations in 70+ cities.
Operation
A customer orders a parcel from Amazon and has it delivered to a Locker location. Amazon's preferred carriers deliver to the locker, and the customer receives a digital pick-up code via email or text messaging. Once the unique pick-up code is entered into the locker's touch screen, the assigned door opens for package retrieval. Amazon customers have three days to collect their packages once they receive their pick-up code.
Amazon customers can also return packages to select Amazon Lockers.
Amazon Lockers can sometimes be full and therefore not available when a delivery is attempted. In that case customers will have to wait an unspecified amount of time until space is available.
Locker locations
Amazon partners with retail stores such as 7-Eleven and Spar to host Amazon Locker kiosks. Retailers receive a stipend from Amazon to host the kiosks. Staples and RadioShack joined the program briefly in 2012, only to withdraw the following year.
7-Eleven has kiosks in 186 locations in the US as of 2015.
In the United Kingdom, Amazon has a partnership with Co-op Food and Morrisons. Lockers are located within some Co-op and Morrisons stores. Since 2012, libraries in West Sussex have also been operating Lockers. Large retail centres often have Amazon Lockers, for example there are two in One New Change in London, and there is one in Stratford Centre. The largest Amazon Locker in the world and the busiest in the UK is called Ivory. It has 115 lockers and is located near the Rootes building at the University of Warwick.
Amazon has also expanded the Locker program in Canada, France, Spain, Germany and Italy.
In 2017, Amazon announced plans to launch Amazon Locker in select Whole Foods Market locations.
Amazon Hub
Amazon Hub is a delivery locker for apartment lobbies. The delivery locker accepts packages from all carriers. Amazon Hub was in beta from 2017 until June 2018, when Amazon announced that its Hub program would be available to all property management companies throughout the United States.
As of 2020, Amazon was using "Amazon Hub Locker+" to refer to a staffed version of Amazon Lockers, which allowed for customers to pick up large packages, and for customers to return items without a box.
Pharmaceutical lockers
Several manufacturers offer parcel lockers designed for pickup of drugs, either at pharmacies or in remote locations. One design as an integrated audio-visual connection for conferring with a pharmacist. Drug pickup lockers are deployed at some Costco pharmacies and have been piloted at CVS Health. A shortage of pharmacists in the 2020s increased pressure to adopt this solution. Though delivery of prescription drugs by mail is common, some jurisdictions (for example the U.S. state of Georgia) have laws which do not allow the use of unattended lockers.
Systems around the world
Asia
Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, a partnership between ekpay of A2I and Daraz created ekShop-Digibox Parcel locker. The manufacturing of the solution was done completely within Bangladesh and said to be much cheaper than western or Chinese solutions. The lockers were situated at the metro stations for ease of access.
Australia and Oceania
Australia Post offers a similar service with facilities located in or near various post offices.
UAE
A courier company called Parzel Express introduced automated delivery machines in United Arab Emirates in 2011 manufactured by KEBA.
Europe
Germany
Packstation is a service run by DHL Parcel Germany, a business unit of Deutsche Post's Mail division, in Germany and elsewhere (e.g. in Italy). It started as a pilot project in 2001 and was quickly expanded. There are 3,000 Packstation machines in Germany and 90 percent of the people living in Germany were within ten minutes of a DHL Packstation. Only ordinary parcels and letters delivered by Deutsche Post can be delivered to Packstations. Moreover, Deutsche Post allows its subsidiary DHL Express Germany to insert a limited number of express parcels. Packstations were originally manufactured by the Austrian company KEBA with newer stations developed by DHL Paket in conjunction with Polygon.
Packstation
Packstation is a service of parcel lockers run by DHL Parcel Germany, a business unit of Deutsche Post's Mail division, in Germany and elsewhere (e.g. in Italy). It provides automated booths for a self-service collection of parcels and oversize letters as well as self-service dispatch of parcels 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Packstation started as a pilot project in 2001 and was quickly expanded. There are 12,500 Packstation machines in Germany and 90 percent of the people living in Germany were within ten minutes of a DHL Packstation. Only ordinary parcels and letters delivered by Deutsche Post can be delivered to Packstations. Moreover, Deutsche Post allows its subsidiary DHL Express Germany to insert a limited number of express parcels. Packstations were originally manufactured by the Austrian company KEBA with newer stations developed by DHL Paket in conjunction with Polygon.
A major market for Packstation is the increasing number of single people, especially students and time-poor professionals, who purchase products online but are not normally at home at daytime to accept deliveries, or who do not have the time to deposit parcels at the post office during normal opening hours.
As of September 2023 there were over 23 million registered Packstation customers in Germany according to Deutsche Post.
Using Packstations is free of charge both for private and business customers; however, prior registration through the web portal Paket.de is required for collection of parcels.
Each customer obtains a magnetic stripe card ("Goldcard") and PIN that can be used to identify the customer at Packstation machines and post offices. Previously, it was possible to use the Packstation by entering the customer number and the PIN. This was changed in 2011 in order to increase security as said by DHL, usage of the Goldcard is mandatory now. On 29 October 2012, a mandatory mTAN was introduced, this is transmitted solely in the SMS notification or can be retrieved from the DHL Paket App. Each mTAN is valid only for one opening procedure (which may entitle to open several booths if the recipient has received numerous shipments), thereby replacing the PIN. Newer Packsations can communicate with the user's mobile phone via Bluetooth if the DHL App is available on the phone. A PIN or TAN is then no longer necessary.
Austria
Austria's Österreichische Post introduced a virtually identical service called Post.24-Station in November 2006. The booths are manufactured by the same company that makes the packstations, KEBA. In Vienna, Stations have been erected in supermarkets, petrol stations, and post offices that can easily be reached by public transport.
Ireland
In the Republic of Ireland, ParcelMotel is owned by the Nightline courier company. ParcelMotel has operated since 2012 and had 124 locations providing over 10,000 locker spaces throughout the Republic of Ireland. All locations were closed on January 31, 2023. ParcelMotel also offered a UK address for parcel delivery which allowed customers in Ireland to take advantage of free UK delivery. They also offered free/business paid return services, motel-to-motel delivery at special rates and a parcel sending service.
Finland
A company called SmartPOST, run by the Finnish Posti Group runs a network of self-service parcel terminals in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The terminals are located in shopping centres and other public premises. They enable clients to send and receive parcels and pay for them at the collection point. There is a terminal for every Estonian in a range of a 15-minute drive. The parcel terminals were introduced to Finland in 2011. The parcel terminals and the software running the system are manufactured in Estonia by Cleveron.
Turkey
Turkey's national post, the PTT, has been installing domestically produced Kargomat lockers since 2019.
Latvia
Latvian company, PostService, runs a network of 39 self-service parcel terminals in Latvia, called (English: My Post Station). Terminals are located in 27 cities and towns in Latvia. The terminals are constructed and manufactured in Latvia by PostService itself.
Baltic
Additionally as of 2022, in Baltics parcel locker services by Venipak, Omniva, DPD and Latvijas Pasts are operating.
Poland
Polish company InPost runs a network of almost 29,000 self-service parcel terminals in Poland called Paczkomaty 24/7. Terminals are located in shopping centres, car parks and gas stations. The terminals enable clients to send and receive parcels.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, InPost operate lockers, which are found in various locations including fuel station, railway stations, forecourts and supermarkets. According to the company, they are "strategically located in urban areas where people work, shop and play".
Russia
In Russia Parcel lockers have gained a lot of popularity, with multiple big companies offering such a service. Among them are: Logibox, PickPoint, QIWI Post, EMS Russian Post, Yandex Market and Russian Post.
France
In France, Parcel Lockers are a fast growing segment with main players in the market being: InPost, Amazon and Vinted.
Vinted Go (logistics service of Vinted) was launched in France in July 2022 and will place more than 13,000 Parcel Lockers across the country, creating the largest network in France and one of the largest in the world. The Lockers are manufactured by the Portuguese company Bloq.it, and are placed across nation-wide retail chains such as Franprix, Carrefour, and CASINO stores.
Americas
Canadian company BufferBox, which was acquired by Google in November 2012, operates a similar system in Ontario. However, the service has since been suspended, and a message on their homepage shows the company is focusing on Google Express Checkout. When the pandemic arrived in early 2020, retailers scrambled to find ways to meet consumer demand for their products while simultaneously managing last-mile delivery costs, overall margins, and maintaining contactless solutions. Parcel lockers began to fill this need by using technology to reduce logistics costs and provide a frictionless, and contactless option for customers.
Amazon Lockers are a similar service specific to deliveries fulfilled through online retailer Amazon.
The United States Postal Service announced a similar service called "", announced in 2011 and with permanent locker installation starting in August 2014 at 17 locations in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Correos de Costa Rica offers a similar service with automated delivery machines located in various supermarkets.
The test program started in July 2017. The machines are manufactured in Costa Rica. In 2018, the operation of the smart locker system known as API was started. The Api lockers are manufactured by Correos de Costa Rica itself. The network has 102 locations throughout Costa Ríca. With further expansion in the near future.
Gallery
References
Express mail
Postal services
Postal infrastructure
Commercial machines | Parcel locker | [
"Physics",
"Technology"
] | 2,420 | [
"Physical systems",
"Commercial machines",
"Machines"
] |
69,496,472 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupant-centric%20building%20controls | Occupant-centric building controls or Occupant-centric controls (OCC) is a control strategy for the indoor environment, that specifically focuses on meeting the current needs of building occupants while decreasing building energy consumption. OCC can be used to control lighting and appliances, but is most commonly used to control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). OCC use real-time data collected on indoor environmental conditions, occupant presence and occupant preferences as inputs to energy system control strategies. By responding to real-time inputs, OCC is able to flexibly provide the proper level of energy services, such as heating and cooling, when and where it is needed by occupants. Ensuring that building energy services are provided in the right quantity is intended to improve occupant comfort while providing these services only at the right time and in the right location is intended to reduce overall energy use.
In contrast to OCC, conventional building control strategies, known as Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), typically use predetermined temperature setpoints and setback schedules. These temperatures and temperature schedules are often determined by industry standards with no input from the building occupants. Conventional BEMS typically have static operation parameters that give minimal flexibility to meet the changing needs of building occupants throughout the day, the changing needs of new building tenants, or the diverse thermal needs of any given group of building occupants.
The American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers has outlined that thermal comfort of occupants is influenced both by environmental conditions such as radiative heat, humidity, air speed and season as well as personal factors such as physiology, clothing worn and activity level. This dynamic and personalized nature of thermal comfort has traditionally made it complex it integrate into HVAC controls but an increase in sensing and computing capabilities along with a decrease in sensing and computing costs has made it possible for OCC to be an effective and scalable means of controlling building energy systems. With buildings consuming over 33% of global energy, and producing almost 40% of emissions, OCC could play a significant role in reducing global energy consumption and emissions.
Background
Occupant-Centric Control Inputs
OCC relies on real-time occupancy and occupant preference data as inputs to the control algorithm. This data must be continually collected by various methods and can be collected on various scales including whole-building, floor, room, and sub-room. Often, it is most useful to collect data on a scale that matches the thermal zoning of the building. A thermal zone is a section of a building that is all conditioned under the same temperature setpoint.
Data on occupant presence (occupied or unoccupied) and occupancy levels (number of occupants) can be collected with either explicit or implicit sensors. Explicit sensors directly measure occupancy and can include passive infrared sensors, ultrasonic motion detectors, and entranceway counting cameras. Implicit sensors measure a parameter that can be correlated to occupancy through some calibrated relationship. Examples of implicit occupancy sensors includes sensors and Wi-Fi-connected device count. The selection of occupancy sensing devices depends on the size of the space being monitored, the budget for sensors, the desired accuracy, the goal of the sensor (detecting occupant presence or count), and security considerations.
Unlike occupant presence data, acquiring occupant preference data requires direct feedback from building occupants. This feedback can be solicited or unsolicited. Unsolicited occupant preference data can include the time and magnitude of a manual thermostat setpoint change. While this can be a good indicator of occupant thermal dissatisfaction, thermostat setpoint changes can be infrequent creating a barrier to integrating occupant preference into OCC. Solicited occupant preference information is often used as a means of acquiring more occupant preference information and takes the form of just-in-time surveys or Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA). These surveys, typically deployed to computers, smart phones, or smart watches, can ask participants about their thermal sensation, thermal satisfaction or any other factor that reflects their comfort in the space. Implementing occupant preference information into OCC is still in its early stages and its practical application is still being studied in the academic environment.
Predictive Controls
OCC can be categorized as either reactive control or predictive control. Reactive control uses the real-time occupant preference and presents feedback to immediately alter the conditions of the space. While this approach is useful for controlling systems with fast response times such as lighting systems, reactive OCC is not ideal for systems with slow response times such as HVAC. For these slow response systems, predictive control allows building services, such as heating, to be provided at the right time without a lag between the time a service is needed and the time when the service is provided.
Unlike reactive controls, predictive controls use real-time occupant preference and presence data to inform and train predictive control algorithms rather than directly impact the system operation. Predictive controls have a ‘prediction horizon’ which is the amount of time ahead that an OCC will need to change a setpoint or ventilation rate to achieve a certain temperature or indoor air quality level. The needed prediction horizon for an OCC will vary depending on the response time of the building. Building attributes that contribute to the need for a longer prediction horizon when controlling HVAC systems include large open rooms, high thermal mass, and spaces with rapid changes in occupancy levels.
For commercial HVAC OCC, predictive algorithms will be informed by the six information grades (IGs) outlined by ASHRAE. These IGs are occupant presence, occupant count, and occupant preference, each considered at the building and thermal zone level. From occupant presence data, an OCC may predict the earliest occupant arrival time and latest departure time. From occupant count, an OCC may predict the maximum expected number of building occupants and when. From occupant preference data, an OCC may predict the desired temperature and humidity of the space throughout the day. With this information, an OCC could predict when it would need to change temperature setpoints and ventilation rates to achieve a desired temperature, and air quality level at a specific time. Predictive algorithms needs a sufficient amount of data as well as relatively regular occupant preference and presence patterns to develop accurate control predictions.
Occupant-Centric Control Development
The development of OCC is currently being supported by the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy in Buildings and Community (EBC) Annex 79. Annex 79, which will run from 2018 to 2023, is an international collaborative initiative focused on developing and deploying technology, data collection methods, simulation methods, control algorithms, implementation policies, and application strategies aimed at occupant-centric building design and controls. This collaborative is focused on applying the knowledge gained from the previous Annex 66 which ran from 2013 to 2018. Annex 66 worked to understand how occupant behavior relates to building energy consumption as well as how building operation and design influence occupant thermal comfort. This was done primarily by collecting occupant behavior data and developing occupant simulation methods.
Additional groups working to develop OCC include the ASHRAE Multidisciplinary Task Group on Occupant Behavior in Buildings (MGT.OBB), and the National Science Foundation Future of Work Center for Intelligent Environments.
Occupant-Centric Control Algorithms
OCC is still in development where the creation and evaluation of various control algorithms are the main focus of study. Algorithms that have been studied for OCC include, but are not limited to, iterative data fusion methods, unsupervised machine learning, and reinforcement learning. Each of these algorithms has varying levels of computational complexity, needed inputs, and energy reduction potential.
Iterative data fusion methods are an example of reactive OCC controls and are a means of combining data from two or more sources. For this method, preference data from multiple occupants and data on indoor environmental conditions is used to balance the two optimization goals of average occupant satisfaction and energy savings. To balance these goals, each time new data is put into the system, the algorithm will determine if any control action is needed, such as changing the temperature setpoint, based on a set of control rules that determine how well the optimization goals are being met
Unsupervised machine learning can be used to cluster occupants based on their ‘thermal personalities’. These clusters can then be used to inform reactive or predictive controls by understanding the thermal preferences of the specific occupants in the space. For this method, solicited occupant preference information is fed into an unsupervised machine algorithm that will group occupants based on how similar their thermal preferences are. The number and size of the groups depends on the type of unsupervised algorithm used as well as the data being analyzed.
Reinforcement machine learning can be used as a predictive control algorithm with the goal of optimizing occupant satisfaction and energy savings. For this method, the algorithm accepts occupant presence and preference data and uses it to learn occupant preferences without the need to train the algorithm on previous data. The algorithm will evaluate each control decision it makes in order to maximize its reward which is based on its ability to optimize occupant satisfaction and energy savings. This algorithm is capable of making continual adjustments based on new information it receives.
References
Ergonomics
Human–computer interaction
Ventilation | Occupant-centric building controls | [
"Engineering"
] | 2,001 | [
"Human–computer interaction",
"Human–machine interaction"
] |
69,496,724 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetium%20phosphide | Lutetium phosphide is an inorganic compound of lutetium and phosphorus with the chemical formula . The compound forms dark crystals, does not dissolve in water.
Synthesis
Heating powdered lutetium and red phosphorus in an inert atmosphere or vacuum:
4Lu + P4 -> 4LuP
It can also be formed in the reaction of lutetium and phosphine.
Physical properties
Lutetium phosphide forms dark cubic crystals, space group Fmm, cell parameters a = 0.5533 nm, Z = 4.
Stable in air, does not dissolve in water and reacts actively with nitric acid.
Uses
The compound is a semiconductor used in high power, high-frequency applications, and in laser diodes.
Also used in gamma radiation detectors due to its ability to absorb radiation.
References
Phosphides
Lutetium compounds
Semiconductors
Rock salt crystal structure | Lutetium phosphide | [
"Physics",
"Chemistry",
"Materials_science",
"Engineering"
] | 182 | [
"Electrical resistance and conductance",
"Physical quantities",
"Semiconductors",
"Materials",
"Electronic engineering",
"Condensed matter physics",
"Solid state engineering",
"Matter"
] |
69,497,612 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thushara%20Pillai | Thushara Pillai is an Indian astrophysicist and astronomer with a senior research scientist position at Boston University's Institute for Astrophysical Research and MIT Haystack Observatory. Her research interests have included molecular clouds, high-mass star formation, magnetic fields, astrochemistry, and the Galactic Center. She is known for her work that looked to understand star formation by observing magnetized interstellar clouds, and Pillai is the first astronomer to capture images of magnetic fields reorienting near areas of star formation.
Early life and education
Pillai was born 20 June 1980 in Kerala, India to parents P. Gopalakrishna Pillai and K. S. Shyamala Kumar. She attended KV Pattom where she was a 1997 Class XII Batch alumna, and Pillai's mother was a teacher at this government day school. Pillai's parents and teachers from an early age encouraged her to pursue physics and higher education.
Pillai attended Government Women's College in Thiruvananthapuram to receive her BSc in physics. Then, she pursued her Masters in Physics at IIT Madras, where one summer, she was given the opportunity to participate in an astronomy project at the National Center for Radio Astronomy in Pune, pushing her interest toward astronomy and astrophysics. She completed her highest education, a PhD in astronomy, at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.
Career
Pillai holds the position of Senior Research Scientist at Boston University's Institute for Astrophysical Research. She also held a guest researcher position at her alma mater, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, where she worked in the Department of Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy. There, her research focused on early phase chemistry, infrared dark clouds, high mass star formation, and star formation and cloud evolution in the galactic center.
Research
Pillai is most known for her paper published in Nature Astronomy, "Magnetized filamentary gas flows feeding the young embedded cluster in Serpens South." This paper shed light on the extent to which molecular clouds in space play a role in star formation. A grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences to Boston University helped support this research, which used data from NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Using this technology, Pillai and her team were able to construct images of magnetic fields' directions and structures near the site of star formation. These images are useful to current and future understandings of interstellar space star formation.
Much of Pillai's research has been done with support from NASA, the German Space Center, the Universities Space Research Association, the National Science Foundation, the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School, the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais. She often works with her husband, Jens Kauffmann, who is an astronomer affiliated with the California Institute of Technology.
Selected publications
References
Women astronomers
Women astrophysicists
21st-century Indian astronomers
Indian astrophysicists
Boston University faculty
Living people
1980 births | Thushara Pillai | [
"Astronomy"
] | 630 | [
"Women astronomers",
"Astronomers"
] |
69,497,745 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOS%20%288-bit%20operating%20system%29 | EOS is the built-in operating system of the Coleco Adam. There are bindings in high-level programming languages like BASIC.
Overview
The functions are grouped into categories as follows.
Executive calls
eos_init
eos_hard_init
eos_hard_reset_net
eos_delay_after_hard_reset
eos_synchronize_clocks
eos_scan_for_devices
eos_relocate_pcb
eos_soft_init
eos_exit_to_smartwriter
eos_switch_memory_banks
Console Output
eos_console_init
eos_console_display_regular
eos_console_display_special
Printer Interface
eos_print_character
eos_print_buffer
eos_printer_status
eos_start_print_character
eos_end_print_character
Keyboard Interface
eos_keyboard_status
eos_read_keyboard
eos_start_read_keyboard
eos_end_read_keyboard
File Operations
eos_file_manager_init
eos_check_directory_for_file
eos_find_file_1
eos_find_file_2
eos_find_file_in_fcb
eos_check_file_mode
eos_make_file
eos_update_file_in_directory
eos_open_file
eos_close_file
eos_read_file
eos_write_file
eos_trim_file
eos_initialize_directory
eos_reset_file
eos_get_date
eos_put_date
eos_delete_file
eos_rename_file
Device Operations
eos_find_pcb
eos_find_dcb
eos_request_device_status
eos_get_device_status
eos_soft_reset_device
eos_soft_reset_keyboard
eos_soft_reset_printer
eos_read_block
eos_read_one_block
eos_start_read_one_block
eos_end_read_one_block
eos_write_block
eos_write_one_block
eos_start_write_one_block
eos_end_write_one_block
eos_start_read_character_device
eos_end_read_character_device
eos_read_character_device
eos_start_write_character_device
eos_end_write_character_device
eos_write_character_device
Video RAM Management
eos_set_vdp_ports
eos_set_vram_table_address
eos_load_ascii_in_vdp
eos_put_ascii_in_vdp
eos_write_vram
eos_read_vram
eos_put_vram
eos_get_vram
eos_write_vdp_register
eos_read_vdp_register
eos_fill_vram
eos_calculate_pattern_position
eos_point_to_pattern_position
eos_write_sprite_table
Game Controllers
eos_read_game_controller
eos_update_spinner
Sound Routines
eos_sound_init
eos_sound_off
eos_start_sound
eos_play_sound
eos_end_sound
Subroutines
eos_decrement_low_nibble
eos_decrement_high_nibble
eos_move_high_nibble_to_low_nibble
eos_add_a_to_hl
References
External links
Technical Reference Manual chapter 3
EOS-5 source code
Boot code, Forum
Disk operating systems
Discontinued operating systems
1983 software | EOS (8-bit operating system) | [
"Technology"
] | 790 | [
"Operating system stubs",
"Computing stubs"
] |
69,498,203 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD%20139319 | HD 139319 is a ternary system composed of the binary Algol variable star known as TW Draconis, and a main-sequence companion star at a separation of 3 arcseconds. The system lies in the constellation of Draco about away.
System
The primary star is an eclipsing, semi-detached binary, the brighter component of which is a pulsating star of Delta Scuti type. Its pulsation frequency is 17.99 cycles per day. Mass transfer between stars is ongoing in the system with a transfer rate of 6.8×10−7/year. The 2.8 day period of the Algol binary is cyclically variable with a period 116.04 years, possibly due to gravitational influence of the distant companion HD 139319B. Another three stars in the system are suspected.
References
3
Draco (constellation)
J15335104+6354257
BD+64 1077
076196
139319
G-type main-sequence stars
K-type giants
F-type main-sequence stars
Algol variables
Draconis, TW | HD 139319 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 230 | [
"Constellations",
"Draco (constellation)"
] |
75,339,831 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual%20mortality%20event | An unusual mortality event (UME) is a term in United States environmental law that refers to a set of strandings, morbidities, or mortalities of marine mammals that are significant, unexpected, and demanding of an immediate response. While the term is only officially defined in a statute in the US, it has been employed unofficially by cetacean conservation agencies and organizations internationally as well.
In the United States
Definition and criteria
The United States Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) defines an Unusual Mortality Event (UME) as "a stranding event that is unexpected, involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal population, and demands immediate response." Additionally, the law sets out seven criteria that may make a mortality event "unusual." These are:
"A marked increase in the magnitude or a marked change in the nature of morbidity, mortality, or strandings when compared with prior records."
"A temporal change in morbidity, mortality, or strandings is occurring."
"A spatial change in morbidity, mortality, or strandings is occurring."
"The species, age, or sex composition of the affected animals is different than that of animals that are normally affected."
"Affected animals exhibit similar or unusual pathologic findings, behavior patterns, clinical signs, or general physical condition (e.g., blubber thickness)."
"Potentially significant morbidity, mortality, or stranding is observed in species, stocks, or populations that are particularly vulnerable (e.g., listed as depleted, threatened, or endangered or declining). For example, stranding of three or four right whales may be cause for great concern whereas stranding of a similar number of fin whales may not."
"Morbidity is observed concurrent with or as part of an unexplained continual decline of a marine mammal population, stock, or species."
The national Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events, consisting of a group of marine mammal health experts, assesses mortality events, and if it finds that one meets one or more of these criteria, it recommends that NOAA's Assistant Administrator for Fisheries declare a UME.
Past and present examples
The NOAA has declared 72 marine mammal UMEs since 1991. Of these, 5 remained open as of November 2023:
UME declared 2017 for humpback whales in the Atlantic due to vessel strikes.
UME declared 2017 for North Atlantic right whales in the Atlantic (US and Canada) due to vessel strikes and rope entanglements.
UME declared 2019 for gray whales in the Pacific due to undetermined causes.
UME declared 2021 for manatees in the Atlantic (Florida) due to malnutrition resulting from forage changes.
UME declared 2022 for harbor and grey seals in the Atlantic due to infectious disease.
Internationally
Marine mammal mortality events fitting the criteria of a UME are not confined to waters under U.S. jurisdiction. While the concept of a UME is not officially defined in the laws of any other countries, there have been several examples of European management agencies or organizations borrowing the term to define an ongoing mortality event under their purview.
In 2013, the executive officer of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group published an essay on the group's website asking, "Are we Experiencing an Unusual Mortality Event (UME) in Ireland?" The concerns centered around increased strandings of various species of dolphins, paralleling a declared UME relating to bottlenose dolphins in the U.S. at the time.
A 2018 Advisory Committee meeting of ASCOBANS (a multilateral agreement to protect small cetaceans in the Baltic, Irish, and North Seas as well as the northeast Atlantic Ocean) included a presentation that affirmed the existence of a UME relating to beaked whales in the UK and Ireland.
A best practices document jointly published by ASCOBANS and ACCOBAMS (a similar agreement covering the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and contiguous Atlantic area west of the Straits of Gibraltar) included the U.S. definition of UME more or less verbatim.
References
Marine biology
Environmental law | Unusual mortality event | [
"Biology"
] | 844 | [
"Marine biology"
] |
75,340,267 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efbemalenograstim%20alfa | Efbemalenograstim alfa, sold under the brand name Ryzneuta, is a medication used to decrease the incidence of infection in chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. It is a leukocyte growth factor. It is given by subcutaneous injection.
The most common side effects of efbemalenograstim alfa are nausea, anemia, and thrombocytopenia.
Efbemalenograstim alfa is an immunostimulant/colony stimulating factor that belongs to the class of hematopoietic growth factors (granulocyte colony stimulating factor; G CSF) which increase the production and differentiation of mature and functionally active neutrophils from bone marrow precursor cells. It was approved for medical use in China in May 2023, in the United States in November 2023, and in the European Union in March 2024.
Medical uses
In the US, efbemalenograstim alfa is indicated to decrease the incidence of infection, as manifested by febrile neutropenia, in adults with non-myeloid malignancies receiving myelosuppressive anti-cancer drugs associated with a clinically significant incidence of febrile neutropenia.
In the EU, efbemalenograstim alfa is indicated for the reduction in the duration of neutropenia and the incidence of febrile neutropenia in adults treated with cytotoxic chemotherapy for malignancy (with the exception of chronic myeloid leukaemia and myelodysplastic syndromes).
Side effects
Efbemalenograstim alfa can cause fatal splenic rupture, acute respiratory distress syndrome, serious allergic reactions including anaphylaxis, sickle cell crises in patients with sickle cell disorders, glomerulonephritis, thrombocytopenia, capillary leak syndrome, and myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia in people with breast and lung cancer.
History
The US Food and Drug Administration approved efbemalenograstim alfa based on evidence from two main clinical trials, GC-627-04 and GC-627-05, in 515 participants with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy. There was one participant included in the trial from the United States, and 514 participants were included from sites outside of the United States. The trials were conducted at 52 sites in five countries including Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and the United States. The same trials (GC-627-04 and GC-627-05) were used to assess efficacy and safety.
Efbemalenograstim alfa was evaluated in two main clinical trials that were randomized and controlled. A total of 515 participants were randomized to receive efbemalenograstim alfa or placebo, or Neulasta, after receiving myelosuppressive anticancer drugs associated with a clinically significant incidence of febrile neutropenia to treat metastatic breast cancer. Both trials evaluated the benefit and side effects of efbemalenograstim alfa in participants. The benefit of efbemalenograstim alfa was based on the mean duration of severe neutropenia seen in participants after receiving either efbemalenograstim alfa or control (placebo or Neulasta).
Society and culture
Legal status
It was approved for medical use in China in May 2023, in the United States in November 2023, and in the European Union in March 2024.
In January 2024, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the medicinal product Ryzneuta, intended to reduce the duration of neutropenia and the incidence of febrile neutropenia due to chemotherapy. The applicant for this medicinal product is Evive Biotechnology Ireland Limited. Efbemalenograstim alfa was approved for medical use in the European Union in March 2024.
References
External links
Drugs acting on the blood and blood forming organs
Growth factors
Immunostimulants
Recombinant proteins | Efbemalenograstim alfa | [
"Chemistry",
"Biology"
] | 879 | [
"Growth factors",
"Recombinant proteins",
"Biotechnology products",
"Signal transduction"
] |
75,341,028 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria%20Calzada | Victoria Calzada Falcón (Montevideo, 2 July 1985), is a Uruguayan biochemist, professor, researcher and scientist.
Life and work
In 2020, Calzada was awarded the L'Oréal UNESCO Awards for Women in Science for her country. She studied at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of the Republic in Uruguay.
She is a specialist in the area of aptamers and molecular imaging, and since 2012 she is a member of the National System of Researchers of Uruguay.
References
1985 births
Uruguayan women educators
Uruguayan biochemists
L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science laureates
Living people | Victoria Calzada | [
"Chemistry"
] | 125 | [
"Biochemistry stubs",
"Biochemists",
"Biochemist stubs"
] |
75,342,516 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas%20Schemske | Douglas Schemske is an evolutionary ecologist who made major contributions to research on pollination, the latitudinal gradient in species diversity, the evolution of polyploidy, and plant mating systems.
Career
Doug Schemske received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1977 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He held academic positions at Amherst College, the University of Chicago and the University of Washington, prior to joining Michigan State University in 2001, where he worked for the rest of his career. He was elected vice president of the American Society of Naturalists in 2009.
Research
Schemske's research investigated the ecological factors that contribute to adaptation and speciation, and the genetic architecture of adaptive traits. He used plants as model study systems, and conducted creative and sometimes long term experiments to test evolutionary theory. Schemske's work on the plant genus Mimulus is particularly well known. With long-term collaborator Tony Bradshaw, he bred two Mimulus species together to create a wide array of flower shapes and colours, and was able to show that evolutionary transitions from bee pollination to hummingbird pollination could happen via a small number of genetic changes.
Later in his career Schemske became interested in the ecological and evolutionary processes that create the dramatic increase in diversity from the poles to equator, known as the latitudinal diversity gradient. With Gary Mittlebach and other collaborators, Schemske wrote influential reviews of these processes that inspired extensive research. In particular, he drew attention to the potential role of biotic interactions in driving evolutionary diversification in the tropics.
With then-PhD student Amy Angert, Schemske used reciprocal transplant experiments and experimental evolution to study the processes that limit species' geographic ranges, again using Mimulus.
Awards and honours
In 1986, less than 10 years after his PhD, Schemske won the Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America, for "an outstanding ecological research paper published within the past two years by a younger researcher" for his 1984 paper on population structure in an annual plant. In 2002 he received the Distinguished Naturalist Award (then known as the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Award) from the American Society of Naturalists. The award citation says "He not only dwells on the beautiful and enlightening details of living organisms, but he crafts these details into important and broad conceptual insights that inform many natural systems. He won the It is this deep understanding of natural history that makes Douglas Schemke's work so remarkable". In 2003 he was elected to the US American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Schemske was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in May 2017 in honour of his distinguished research achievements in population biology and evolutionary ecology.
References
Living people
Ecologists
Michigan State University faculty
Year of birth missing (living people) | Douglas Schemske | [
"Environmental_science"
] | 581 | [
"Ecologists",
"Environmental scientists"
] |
75,345,233 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis%20Birch%20Lecture | The Francis Birch Lecture is an annual lecture constituting the highest honor in tectonophysics from the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The lecture is named in honor of Francis Birch, famous as a pioneer of solid Earth geophysics. The Birch Lecture, inaugurated in 1992, is presented at the AGU autumn meeting by a recipient whose research has significantly contributed to tectonophysics "through observations, experiments, the development of analytical methods or modeling."
The Birch Lecture forms part of the AGU's Bowie Lecture Series, established in 1989. The AGU's highest honor is the William Bowie Medal, named in honor of William Bowie — the AGU's first president with an international reputation in geodesy, geophysics, and engineering.
The AGU invites the Birch Lecturer and does not accept nominations for the Birch Lectureship.
Birch Lecturers
See also
List of geology awards
List of geophysics awards
References
American Geophysical Union awards
Recurring events established in 1992
Science lecture series
1992 establishments in the United States | Francis Birch Lecture | [
"Technology"
] | 212 | [
"Science and technology awards",
"Science award stubs"
] |
75,345,314 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%20Information%20Technology%20Board | The National Information Technology Board (NITB) is an autonomous government agency under the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication in Pakistan. It was founded in 2014.
History
National Information Technology Board (NITB) was established in 2014 after the merger of the Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB) and the Electronic Government Directorate (EGD). However, after the passage of the National Information Technology Board Act, of 2022, its status was changed to an autonomous body.
In 2022, NITB was given the autonomous status through the National Information Technology Board Act, 2022. The Act was approved by the President of Pakistan Arif Alvi under Article 75 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
Role and functions
NITB is responsible for implementing e-governance across the country as per the vision and policy of the Federal Government. Its objective is to serve the public in a more efficient and effective manner through the provision of e-governance software applications to advisories, consultancies, and federal ministries and divisions. NITB has developed and launched more than 31 portals and more than 15 mobile applications in the last four years.
Beep Pakistan
NITB launched Pakistan's first communication application "Beep Pakistan" under the leadership of Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque. This application is intended to be a homegrown alternative to WhatsApp and aims for secure and efficient digital communication between government officials and employees.
Controversies
Some controversies have emerged regarding NITB's tendering process for skilled IT-HR outsourcing8. Some participating firms raised questions against the process, alleging that the selection criteria were specifically designed to favor one of the potential bidders.
References
External links
– official website
Government agencies of Pakistan
Information technology organizations
Government agencies established in 2022
2014 establishments in Pakistan | National Information Technology Board | [
"Technology"
] | 365 | [
"Information technology",
"Information technology organizations"
] |
75,346,266 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavros%20Avramidis | Stavros Avramidis (born in Kavala, Greece, in 1958) is a Greek Canadian wood scientist and professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who is an elected fellow (FIAWS) and president of the International Academy of Wood Science for the period 2023-2026.
First years and education
Avramidis was born in Kavala, Greece, on April 6, 1958, and grew up in Thessaloniki. He attended the Department of Forestry at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received his university degree in 1981. Following that, he pursued research-based postgraduate (1982-1983) (M.S. in the area of composite products) and doctoral studies (1983-1986) in the United States at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in the area of biopolymer physics under the guidance of John F. Siau.
Academic career
Avramidis began his academic career in 1987 in Canada at the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor at Department of Wood Science in the Faculty of Forestry. He was appointed associate professor in 1993 and full professor in 1998. Avramidis served as the Head of the UBC Department of Wood Science for two consecutive terms, from 2016 to the present.
Avramidis's research team has presented research work on the physical and drying properties of wood. His applied research addresses practical issues in the Canadian wood industry related to energy optimization and upgrading production methods, using acoustic, electrical, and optical techniques, as well as radio wave methods, simulation, and artificial intelligence.
Research work and recognition
Avramidis along with his colleagues have authored over 250 scientific articles, more than 100 industrial studies, and his research work has received almost 3,000 citations in the Scopus database, until July 2024.
In 2012, Avramidis was selected as a member of the editorial board of the journal, Wood Material Science and Engineering. He has been a member of the editorial boards of Holzforschung, Drying Technology, Wood Research, European Journal of Wood and Wood Products, Maderas. Ciencia y tecnologia and Drying Technology.
In 2020, his name was included in the Mendeley Data, published in the journal Plos Biology for the international impact of his yearlong research in wood drying.
In 2022, Avramidis received the Ternryd Award 2022 from the Swedish Linnaeus Academy Research Foundation for his research in wood science.
In June 2023, Avramidis was elected as the president of the International Academy of Wood Science, for the years 2023–2026. In October 2023, a referred metaresearch conducted by John Ioannidis and his team at Stanford University, included Avramidis in Elsevier Data 2022, where he was placed at the top 2% of researchers in the area of wood physics.
In August 2024, Avramidis has acquired the same international distinction for his research work in wood science (Elsevier Data 2023; career data).
References
External links
Google Scholar
ResearchGate
1958 births
Living people
Academic staff of the University of British Columbia
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry alumni
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki alumni
Greek scientists
Wood sciences
Fellows of the International Academy of Wood Science
Wood scientists | Stavros Avramidis | [
"Materials_science",
"Engineering"
] | 674 | [
"Wood sciences",
"Wood scientists",
"Materials science"
] |
75,347,828 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%207496 | NGC 7496 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Grus. It is located at a distance of about 60 million light-years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that it is 75,000 light years across. It was discovered by John Herschel on September 5, 1834. It is a type 2 Seyfert galaxy with high star formation rate around the nucleus.
Characteristics
The nucleus of the galaxy has been found to be active and it has been categorised as a type 2 Seyfert galaxy. The nucleus has fairly strong emission lines in the optical wavelengths and an intense source of ultraviolet radiation. The spectrum also revealed the presence of an HII region in the nucleus, indicating the presence of young hot stars. The nucleus is also a source of radio waves. The most accepted theory for the energy source of active galactic nuclei is the presence of an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole.
NGC 7496 was one of the first galaxies to be examined by the James Webb Space Telescope, in June 2022, as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS)–JWST survey, whose goal was to study star formation and the interstellar medium in nearby galaxies. The mid infrared images revealed filaments and cavities created by the stellar wind of young stars. Imaging of 3.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) emission, which is caused the ultraviolet radiation being reprossesed by dust, revealed the presence of 67 candidate star clusters embedded in dust. The age of these clusters was estimated to be less than 2 million years while their mass was estimated to be 104–105 . Their location was also correlated with H-alpha and CO(2–1) emission.
Clumpy ultraviolet emission has been observed from the spiral arms of the galaxy. Massive stellar complexes are present in the north arm and regions with young stellar complexes are present in the end of both arms. The age of the stars in these complexes is estimated to be less than 200 million years. Photometry in various wavelengths indicates that there is very cold dust in the galaxy.
Nearby galaxies
NGC 7496 is a member of the NGC 7582 galaxy group. Other members of the group include NGC 7552, NGC 7582, NGC 7590, and NGC 7599, which are also known as the Grus Quartet, NGC 7531, NGC 7632, and IC 5325. This group, along with the group centred around IC 1459 form the Grus cloud, a region of elevated galaxy density. The Grus cloud, along with the nearby Pavo-Indus cloud, lies between the Local Supercluster and Pavo–Indus Supercluster.
Gallery
See also
NGC 7479 - a similar barred galaxy
References
External links
NGC 7496 on SIMBAD
Barred spiral galaxies
Seyfert galaxies
Starburst galaxies
Grus (constellation)
7496
70588
Discoveries by John Herschel
Astronomical objects discovered in 1834
-07-47-020
291- G001 | NGC 7496 | [
"Astronomy"
] | 634 | [
"Grus (constellation)",
"Constellations"
] |
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