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28,837,985 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suaeda%20californica | Suaeda californica is a rare species of flowering plant in the amaranth family known by the common name California seablite. It is now endemic to San Luis Obispo County, California, where it is known from a few occurrences in the marshes around Morro Bay, historical populations around San Francisco Bay have been extirpated.
Description
Suaeda californica is a mound-shaped shrub up to 80 centimeters tall with hairless or slightly hairy succulent green or red-tinged herbage. The woody stems have many branches which are covered with the knoblike bases of old leaves. Between these grow the new leaves, which are lance-shaped and up to 3.5 centimeters long. The flowers occur between the leaves, all along the stems. Each cluster has 1 to 5 flowers and is accompanied by a leaflike bract. The calyx is a cone of fleshy, rounded sepals, and there are no petals. The fruit is an utricle that grows within the calyx.
Habitat
This rare plant, Suaeda californica, grows in a restricted area within the intertidal zone of salt marshes. It is threatened by anything that alters the hydrology of the area, such as changes in sedimentation, including dredging, erosion, and recreation. It requires a porous substrate high in nitrogen, which may come from decaying plant matter and bird droppings. Invasive plant species such as introduced ice plant threaten remaining occurrences and reintroductions.
Endangered status
It once occurred around the San Francisco Bay, but any populations there are now extirpated. It probably once grew along the Petaluma River north of the bay, as remains of the species have been found in adobe bricks there. By 1991 the total remaining number of individuals was estimated to be below 500, and the plant was federally listed as an endangered species of the United States in 1994. Some carefully tended populations have been planted as reintroductions at locations around the San Francisco Bay.
References
External links
Jepson Manual Treatment - Suaeda californica
Flora of North America; Suaeda californica
Suaeda californica - Photo gallery
californica
Endemic flora of California
Halophytes
Salt marsh plants
Natural history of San Luis Obispo County, California
Critically endangered flora of California
Taxa named by Sereno Watson | Suaeda californica | Chemistry | 488 |
23,871,022 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong%20solitaire | Mahjong solitaire (also known as Shanghai solitaire, electronic or computerized mahjong, solitaire mahjong or simply mahjong) is a single-player matching game that uses a set of mahjong tiles rather than cards. It is more commonly played on a computer than as a physical tabletop game. It can be played using genuine tiles and a special wooden frame for set-up, although this has the tedium of set-up and the temptation to cheat.
Its name comes from the four-player game mahjong, but it is played entirely differently.
Play
The 144 tiles are arranged in a four-layer pattern with their faces upwards. A tile is said to be open or exposed if it can be moved either left or right without disturbing other tiles. The goal is to match open pairs of identical tiles and remove them from the board, exposing the tiles under them for play. The game is won when all pairs of tiles have been removed from the board, and lost if the remaining tiles contain no exposed pairs.
Mathematical analysis
Playing Mahjong solitaire optimally in the sense to maximize the probability of removing all tiles is PSPACE-complete, and the game is NP-complete if looking below tiles is allowed. It has been proven that it is PSPACE-hard to approximate the maximum probability of removing all tiles within a factor of , assuming that there are arbitrarily many quadruples of matching tiles and that the hidden tiles are uniformly distributed. The perfect-information version of this puzzle is where the player knows, before the game starts, the position of every tile. In this case, however, it is NP-complete to decide whether all tiles can be removed.
An analysis of ten million games with the default layout, "the turtle", found that about 3 percent of the turtles cannot be solved even when looking below tiles is allowed.
Computer game history
The computer game was originally created by Brodie Lockard in 1981 on the PLATO system and named Mah-Jongg after the game that uses the same tiles for play. Lockard claimed that it was based on a centuries-old Chinese game called "the Turtle". The computer game was released for free and was played using a CDC-721 touch screen terminal.
Activision released Shanghai in 1986 for the IBM Personal Computer, Commodore Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST and Apple IIgs. The Macintosh version was created by Brodie Lockard, and the Apple IIGS version was ported from the Macintosh by Ivan Manley with Brad Fregger as the producer. Around 10 million copies were sold. The game has since been ported to many different platforms. The name "Shanghai" was trademarked by Activision.
As the game is based on mahjong tiles, some confusion arose with the 4-player mahjong game. Although the name mahjong solitaire is widely used, other names include The Turtle, Shanghai Solitaire, Taipei, and Kyodai.
A version of this game was also included in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows 3.x in 1990 under the name Taipei. It was subsequently included in the Best of Windows Entertainment Pack. Premium editions of the Windows Vista operating system and Windows 7 include a version of the game known as Mahjong Titans.
Mahjong Solitaire was added to Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics for Nintendo Switch.
Variations
Mahjong solitaire is usually played in an electronic form as a computer game. Some electronic Mahjong solitaire games offer extra options, such as:
Shuffling the tiles;
Changing the tile set and patterns from the traditional tiles to flowers, jewels or other items that may be easier to match up at a glance;
Playing a series of different layouts with varying levels of difficulty (usually given Chinese-looking names such as 'the ox' or 'the snake');
Adding "wildcard tiles" and other tiles that have special functions.
Adding more pairs, so larger layouts can be made. Sometimes they are new symbols, and sometimes they are extras of normal ones.
Adding a time limit based on the number of tiles in the initial layout.
Mahjong solitaire can be played either solo or with a partner, in which case the aim is to accumulate the most pairs, to be the last one to match a pair, or to score the most points. Points are gained for each pair removed, with bonus points for removing matched pairs in sequence or removing pairs in sequence that are parts of sets. Using traditional mahjong tiles, the sets include the dragons, the flowers, the seasons, and the winds.
Some implementations offer to shuffle the tiles when there are no exposed pairs remaining, making it almost always possible for the player to complete the game. Many implementations offer undo, and nearly all versions will not generate a board that can't be won even with undo.
See also
Shisen-Sho, another solitaire game with Mahjong tiles
Crazy Quilt (solitaire), a solitaire card game where cards are removed from the edges of a grid
Other Solitaire games, especially Patience, or solitaire with cards
Tile-matching video game
Solitaire
Klondike (solitaire)
References
Activision games
Mahjong
Microsoft Entertainment Pack
Microsoft games
Puzzle video games
Tabletop tile games
Double-deck patience card games
NP-complete problems | Mahjong solitaire | Mathematics | 1,077 |
15,669,694 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-use%20self-service | Common-use self-service or CUSS is a shared kiosk offering airport check-in to passengers without the need for ground staff. The CUSS can be used by several participating airlines in a single terminal.
The first major installation of CUSS for multiple airlines was launched in 2003 in a cooperative project between LAS McCarran Airport, ARINC and twelve participating airlines. British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Royal Dutch KLM and Lufthansa By the end of 2008, CUSS had been implemented at more than 100 airports globally.
Benefits
Passengers
CUSS can provide easier and faster passenger passage through the airport, due to less queues. CUSS kiosks can be shared by multiple airlines and are located throughout the airport, ranging from car parks to transit areas, thus cutting down airport crowds.
Airline and airports
Economically, CUSS reduces the labour cost of ground staff required by manual check-in. With the introduction of CUSS, the check-in area at the airport can be reduced to enable more retail outlets, or entertainment facilities. Based on IATA studies, a 40% market penetration of self-service check-in will save $US1 billion per year. CUSS can be implemented in the cloud, optimising resource usage and support overheads, that eliminates the need for servers, core computing space and costly technical manpower.
References
External links
IATA CUSS project page
Latest CUSS News and Implementation
IATA Annual Report 2008
Kiosks | Common-use self-service | Technology | 295 |
20,807 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin | Merlin (, , ) is a mythical figure prominently featured in the legend of King Arthur and best known as a magician, with several other main roles. The familiar depiction of Merlin, based on an amalgamation of historical and legendary figures, was introduced by the 12th-century British pseudo-historical author Geoffrey of Monmouth and then built on by the French poet Robert de Boron and prose successors in the 13th century.
Geoffrey seems to have combined earlier Welsh tales of Myrddin and Ambrosius, two legendary Briton prophets with no connection to Arthur, to form the composite figure that he called Merlinus Ambrosius. His rendering of the character became immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later chronicle and romance writers in France and elsewhere expanded the account to produce a more full, multifaceted character, creating one of the most important figures in the imagination and literature of the Middle Ages.
Merlin's traditional biography casts him as an often-mad cambion, born of a mortal woman and an incubus, from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. His most notable abilities commonly include prophecy and shapeshifting. Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later stories have Merlin as an advisor and mentor to the young king until he disappears from the tale, leaving behind a series of prophecies foretelling events to come. A popular version from the French prose cycles tells of Merlin being bewitched and forever sealed up or killed by his student, the Lady of the Lake, after having fallen in love with her. Other texts variously describe his retirement, at times supernatural, or death.
Name
The name Merlin is derived from the Brythonic name of the legendary bard that Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised to in his works. Medievalist Gaston Paris suggests that Geoffrey chose the form rather than the expected *Merdinus to avoid a resemblance to the Anglo-Norman word (from Latin ) for feces. 'Merlin' may also be an adjective, in which case he should be called "The Merlin", from the French meaning blackbird. According to Martin Aurell, the Latin form Merlinus is a euphony of the Celtic form Myrddin to bring him closer to the blackbird (Latin merula) into which he could metamorphose through his shamanic powers, as was notably the case for Merlin's Irish counterpart.
Myrddin may be a combination of *mer (mad) and the Welsh (man), to mean 'madman'. It may also mean '[of] many names' if it was derived from the Welsh , myriad. In his (1862), La Villemarqué derived Marz[h]in, which he considered the original form of Merlin's name, from the Breton word (wonder) to mean 'wonder man'. or Merlin's Enclosure is an early name for Great Britain as stated in the third series of Welsh Triads.
Celticist Alfred Owen Hughes Jarman suggested that the Welsh name () was derived from the toponym , the Welsh name for the town known in English as Carmarthen. This contrasts with the popular folk etymology that the town was named after the bard. The name Carmarthen is derived from the town's previous Roman name Moridunum, in turn, derived from the Celtic Brittonic moridunon, 'sea fort[ress]'. Eric P. Hamp proposed a similar etymology: Morij:n, 'the maritime' or 'born of the sea'. There is no obvious connection between Merlin and the sea in the texts about him, but Claude Sterckx has suggested that Merlin's father in the Welsh texts, Morfryn, might have been a sea spirit. Philippe Walter connected it with the figure of the insular Celtic sea god Manannán.
Folklorist Jean Markale proposed that the name of Merlin is of French origin and means 'little blackbird', an allusion to the mocking and provocative personality usually attributed to him in medieval stories. The Welsh Myrddin could be also phonetically connected to the name Martin and some of the powers and other attributes of the 4th-century French Saint Martin of Tours (and his disciple Saint Hilaire) in hagiography and folklore are similar to these of Merlin. If a relationship between the two figures does exist, however, it may rather be a reverse one in which the Merlin tradition inspired the later accounts of the saint's miracles and life.
Legend
Geoffrey and his sources
Geoffrey's composite Merlin is based mostly on the North Brythonic poet and seer Myrddin Wyllt, that is Myrddin the Wild (known as Merlinus Caledonensis or Merlin Sylvestris in later texts influenced by Geoffrey). Myrddin's legend has parallels with a northern Welsh and southern Scottish story of the mad prophet Lailoken (Laleocen), probably the same as Myrddin son of Morfryn (Myrddin map Morfryn) mentioned in the Welsh Triads, and with Buile Shuibhne, an Irish tale of the wandering insane king Suibihne mac Colmáin (often Anglicised to Sweeney).
In Welsh poetry, Myrddin was a bard who was driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war and subsequently fled civilization to become a wild man of the wood in the 6th century. He roamed the Caledonian Forest until he was cured of his madness by Kentigern, also known as Saint Mungo. Geoffrey had Myrddin in mind when he wrote his earliest surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini ("Prophecies of Merlin", c. 1130), which he claimed were the actual words of the legendary poet (including some distinctively apocalyptic prophecies for Geoffrey's contemporary 12th century); however, the work reveals little about Merlin's background.
Geoffrey was further inspired by Emrys (Old Welsh: Embreis), a character based in part on the 5th-century historical figure of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus (Welsh name Emrys Wledig, also known as Myrddin Emrys). When Geoffrey included Merlin in his next work, Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), he supplemented his characterisation of Merlin by attributing stories of Ambrosius to Merlin. These stories were taken from one of Geoffrey's primary sources, the early 9th-century Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius. In this source, Ambrosius was discovered when the King of the Britons, Vortigern, attempted to erect a tower at Dinas Emrys (City of Emrys). More than once, the tower collapsed before completion. Vortigen's wise men advised him that the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a child born without a father. Ambrosius was rumoured to be such a child. When he was brought before the king, Ambrosius revealed that below the foundation of the tower was a lake containing two dragons battling into each other, representing the struggle between the invading Saxons (the white dragon) and the native Celtic Britons (the red dragon). Geoffrey retold the story in his Historia Regum Britanniæ, adding new episodes that tie Merlin with King Arthur and his predecessors. Geoffrey stated that this Ambrosius was also called "Merlin", hence Ambrosius Merlinus.
Geoffrey's account of Merlin's early life is based on the story from the Historia Brittonum. At the same time, however, Geoffrey also turned Ambrosius Aurelianus into the separate character of Uther Pendragon's brother Aurelius Ambrosius. Geoffrey added his own embellishments to the tale, which he set in Carmarthen, Wales (Welsh: Caerfyrddin). While Nennius' "fatherless" Ambrosius eventually reveals himself to be the son of a Roman consul, Geoffrey's Merlin is fathered by an incubus demon through a nun, daughter of the King of Dyfed (Demetae, today's South West Wales). Usually, the name of Merlin's mother is not stated, but it is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut, the text also naming his grandfather as King Conaan.
Merlin is born all hairy and already able to speak like an adult, as well as possessing supernatural knowledge that he uses to save his mother. The story of Vortigern's tower is the same; the underground dragons, one white and one red, represent the Saxons and the Britons, and their final battle is a portent of things to come. At this point Geoffrey inserted a long section of Merlin's prophecies, taken from his earlier Prophetiae Merlini. Geoffrey also told two further tales of the character. In the first, Merlin creates Stonehenge as a burial place for Aurelius Ambrosius, bringing the stones from Ireland. In the second, Merlin's magic enables the new British king, Uther Pendragon, to enter into Tintagel Castle in disguise and to father Arthur with his enemy's wife, Igerna (Igraine). These episodes appear in many later adaptations of Geoffrey's account. As Lewis Thorpe notes, Merlin subsequently disappears from the narrative. He does not tutor or advise Arthur as in later versions.
Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work, Vita Merlini (1150). He based it on stories of the original 6th-century Myrddin, set long after his time frame for the life of Merlin Ambrosius. Nevertheless, Geoffrey asserts that the characters and events of Vita Merlini are the same as told in the Historia Regum Britanniae. Here, Merlin survives the reign of Arthur, whose fall he is told about by Taliesin. Merlin spends a part of his life as a madman in the woods and marries a woman named Guendoloena (a character inspired by the historic king Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio). He eventually retires to observing stars from his house with seventy windows in the remote woods of Rhydderch. There, he is often visited by Taliesin and by his own sister Ganieda (a Latinized name of Myrddin's sister Gwenddydd), who has become queen of the Cumbrians and is also endowed with prophetic powers. Compared to Geoffrey's Historia, his Vita seems to have little influence on the later portrayals of Merlin.
Mark Chorvinsky hypothesized that Merlin is based on a historical person, probably a 5th and/or 6th-century druid living in southern Scotland. Nikolai Tolstoy makes a similar argument based on the fact that early references to Merlin describe him as possessing characteristics which modern scholarship would recognize as druidical (but that sources of the time would not have recognized), the inference being that those characteristics were not invented by the early chroniclers but belonged to a real person. If so, the hypothetical proto-Merlin would have lived about a century after the hypothetical historical Arthur.
A late version of the Annales Cambriae (dubbed the "B-text", written at the end of the 13th century) and influenced by Geoffrey, records that in the year 573 after "the battle of Arfderydd, between the sons of Eliffer and Gwenddolau son of Ceidio; in which battle Gwenddolau fell; Myrddin went mad." The earliest version of the same entry in Annales Cambriae (in the "A-text", written c. 1100), as well as a later copy (the "C-text", written towards the end of the 13th century) do not mention Myrddin. Myrddin furthermore shares similarities with the shamanic bard figure of Taliesin, alongside whom he appears in the Welsh Triads and in Vita Merlini, as well as in the poem "Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin" ("The Conversation between Myrddin and Taliesin") from The Black Book of Carmarthen, which was dated by Rachel Bromwich as "certainly" before 1100, that is predating Vita Merlini by at least half century while telling a different version of the same story. According to Villemarqué, the origin of the legend of Merlin lies with the Roman story of Marsus, a son of Circe, which eventually influenced the Breton and Welsh tales of a supernaturally-born bard or enchanter named Marzin or Marddin.
Romance reimagination
Around the turn of the 13th century, Robert de Boron retold and expanded on this material in Merlin, an Old French epic poem inspired by Wace's Roman de Brut, an Anglo-Norman creative adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia. The work presents itself as the story of Merlin's life as told by Merlin himself to be written down by the "real" author while the actual author claimed merely to translate the story into French. Only a few lines of what is believed to be the original text have survived, but a more popular prose version had a great influence on the emerging genre of Arthurian-themed chivalric romance.
As in Geoffrey's Historia, Merlin is created as a demon spawn, but in Robert's account he is explicitly to become the Antichrist intended to reverse the effect of the Harrowing of Hell. The infernal plot is thwarted when a priest named (the story's narrator and perhaps Merlin's divine twin in a hypothetical now-lost oral tradition) is contacted by the child's mother; Blaise immediately baptizes the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin (already able to speak fluently even as a newborn) with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy prophetic knowledge of the future. The text lays great emphasis on Merlin's power to shapeshift, his joking personality, and his connection to the Holy Grail, the quest for which he later foretells.
Merlin was originally part of a cycle of Robert's poems telling the story of the Grail over the centuries. The narrative of Merlin is largely based on Geoffrey's familiar tale of Vortigern's Tower, Uther's war against the Saxons, and Arthur's conception. New in this retelling is the episode of young Arthur (who had been secreted away by Merlin) drawing the sword from the stone, an event orchestrated by Merlin in the role of kingmaker. Earlier, Merlin also instructs Uther to establish the original order of the Round Table for fifty members, following his own act of creating the table itself. The text ends with the coronation of Arthur. The prose version of Robert's poem was then continued in the 13th-century Merlin Continuation, telling of King Arthur's early wars and Merlin's role in them. In this text, also known as the Suite du Merlin, the mage both predicts and, wielding elemental magic, influences the course of battles, in addition to helping the young Arthur in other ways. Eventually, he arranges the reconciliation between Arthur and his rivals, and the surrender of the defeated Saxons and their departure from Britain.
The extended prose rendering of Merlin was incorporated as a foundation of the Lancelot-Grail, a vast cyclical series of Old French prose works also known as the Vulgate Cycle, in the form of the Estoire de Merlin (Story of Merlin), also known as the Vulgate Merlin or the Prose Merlin. There, while not identifying his mother, it is stated that Merlin was named after his grandfather on her side. The Vulgate's Prose Lancelot further relates that after growing up in the borderlands between 'Scotland' (i.e. Pictish lands) and 'Ireland' (i.e. Argyll), Merlin "possessed all the wisdom that can come from demons, which is why he was so feared by the Bretons and so revered that everyone called him a holy prophet and the ordinary people all called him their god." In the Vulgate Cycle's version of Merlin, his acts include arranging the consummation of Arthur's desire for "the most beautiful maiden ever born," Lady Lisanor of Cardigan, resulting in the birth of Arthur's illegitimate son Lohot from before the marriage to Guinevere.
A further reworking and an alternative continuation of the Prose Merlin were included within the subsequent Post-Vulgate Cycle as the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin or the Huth Merlin, the so-called "romantic" rewrite (as opposed to the so-called "historical" original of the Vulgate). It added some content such as Merlin providing Arthur with the sword Excalibur through a Lady of the Lake, while either removing or altering many other episodes. Merlin's magical interventions in the Post-Vulgate versions of his story are relatively limited and markedly less spectacular, even compared to the magical feats of his own students, and his character becomes less moral. In addition, Merlin's prophecies also include sets of alternative possibilities (meaning future can be changed) instead of only certain outcomes. The Post-Vulgate Cycle has Merlin warn Arthur of how the birth of his other son will bring great misfortune and ruin to his kingdom, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eventually, long after Merlin is gone, his advice to dispose of the baby Mordred through an event evoking the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents leads to the deaths of many, among them Arthur.
Both Merlin and its continuations have been adapted in verse and prose, translated into several languages, and further modified to various degrees by other authors. Notably, the Post-Vulgate Suite (along with an earlier version of the Prose Merlin) was the main source for the opening section of Thomas Malory's English-language compilation work Le Morte d'Arthur which formed a now-iconic version of the legend. Compared to some of his French sources (such as the Vulgate Lancelot which described Merlin as "treacherous and disloyal by nature, like his [demon] father before him"), Malory limited the extent of the negative association of Merlin and his powers. He is relatively rarely condemned as demonic by other characters such as King Lot, instead he is presented as an ambiguous trickster. Conversely, Merlin seems to be inherently evil in the so-called non-cyclic Lancelot, where he was born as the "fatherless child" from not a supernatural rape of a virgin but a consensual union between a lustful demon and an unmarried beautiful young lady and was never baptized.
Later developments
As the Arthurian myths were retold, Merlin's prophetic "seer" aspects were sometimes de-emphasized (or even seemingly vanish entirely, as in the fragmentary and more fantastical Livre d'Artus) in favor of portraying him as a wizard and an advisor to the young Arthur, sometimes in the struggle between good and evil sides of his character, and living in deep forests connected with nature. Through his ability to change his shape, he may appear as a "wild man" figure, evoking his prototype Myrddin Wyllt, as a civilized man of any age (including as a very young child), or even as a talking animal. His guises can be highly deformed and animalistic even when Merlin is presenting as a human or humanoid being. In the Perceval en prose (also known as the Didot Perceval and usually also attributed to Robert), where Merlin is the initiator of the Grail Quest and cannot die until the end of days, he eventually retires after Arthur's downfall by turning himself into a bird and entering the mysterious esplumoir, never to be seen again.
Among other medieval works dealing with the Merlin legend is the 13th-century Le Roman de Silence. The Prophéties de Merlin (c. 1276) contains long prophecies of Merlin (mostly concerned with 11th to 13th-century Italian history and contemporary politics), some by his ghost after his death, interspersed with episodes relating Merlin's deeds and with assorted Arthurian adventures in which Merlin does not appear at all. It pictures Merlin as a righteous seer chastising people for their sins, as does the 13th-14th Italian story collection Il Novellino which draws heavily from it. An even more political Italian text was Joachim of Fiore's Expositio Sybillae et Merlini, directed against Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor whom the author regarded as the Antichrist. The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, which sympathizes with Mordred as usual in Scottish chronicle tradition, particularly attributes Merlin's supernatural evil influence on Arthur to its very negative portrayal of his rule.
The earliest Merlin text written in Germany was Caesarius of Heisterbach's Latin Dialogus Miraculorum (1220). Ulrich Füetrer's 15th-century Buch der Abenteuer, in the section based on Albrecht von Scharfenberg's lost Merlin, presents Merlin as Uter's father, effectively making Merlin's grandson Arthur a part-devil too. Bauduin (Baudouin) Butor's 1294 romance known as either Les Fils du Roi Constant or Pandragus et Libanor names Merlin's usually unspecified mother as Optima, daughter of King Melias of Demetia (Dyfed), while Paolino Pieri's 14th-century Italian La Storia di Merlino calls her Marinaia. In the Second Continuation of Perceval, the Story of the Grail, a young daughter of Merlin himself, called the Lady of the High Peak of Mont Dolorous, appears to guide Perceval towards the Grail Castle.
The earliest English verse romance concerning Merlin is Of Arthour and of Merlin of the late 13th century, which drew from the chronicles and the Vulgate Cycle. In English-language medieval texts that conflate Britain with the Kingdom of England, the Anglo-Saxon enemies against whom Merlin aids first Uther and then Arthur tend to be replaced by the Saracens or simply just invading pagans. The 15th-century English poem Sir Gowther presents the titular redeemed half-demon as Merlin's half-brother. In Britain, Merlin remained as much as a prophet as a magician up to and including the 16th century, when political content in the style of Agrippa d'Aubigné continued to be written using Merlin's name to guarantee their authenticity.
During the 15th century, Welsh works predicting the Celtic revenge and victory over the Saxons were recast as Merlin's (Myrddin's) prophecies and used along with Geoffrey by the propaganda of the Welsh-descended Henry VII of England (who fought under the red dragon banner) of the House of Tudor, which traced its lineage directly to Arthur. Later, the Tudors' Welsh supporters, including bards, interpreted the prophecy of King Arthur's return as having been fulfilled after their ascent to the throne of England that they sought to legitimize following the Wars of the Roses. Prophecies attributed to Merlin were also used by the 14th-century Welsh hero Owain Glyndŵr in his fight against the English rule. The vagueness of Merlin's prophecies enabled British monarchs and historians to continue using them even in the early modern period. Notably, the King of Scotland and later also of England and Ireland, James VI and I, claimed his 1603 unification of Britain into the United Kingdom had been foretold by Merlin.
Merlin's apprentice in chivalric romances is often Arthur's half-sister, Morgan le Fay, who is sometimes depicted as Merlin's lover and sometimes as just his unrequited love interest. In the Prophéties de Merlin, he also tutors Sebile, two other witch queens, and the Lady of the Isle of Avalon (Dama di Isola do Vallone). Others who have learned sorcery from Merlin include the Wise Damsel in the Italian Historia di Merlino, and the male wizard Mabon in the Post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation and the Prose Tristan. His various apprentices gain or expand their magical powers through Merlin, however his prophetic powers cannot be passed on.
Tales of Merlin's end
In the prose chivalric romance tradition, Merlin has a major weakness that leads him to his relatively early doom: young beautiful women of femme fatale archetype. Contrary to many modern works in which they are archenemies, Merlin and Morgan are never opposed to each other in any medieval tradition, other than Morgan forcibly rejecting him in some texts. In fact, his love for Morgan is so great that he even lies to the king to save her in the Huth Merlin, which is the only instance of him ever intentionally misleading Arthur.
Instead, Merlin's eventual undoing comes from his lusting after another of his female students: the one often named Viviane, among various other names and spellings (including Malory's own Nyneve that his editor William Caxton changed to Nymue which in turn eventually became the now-popular Nimue). She is also called a fairy (French fee) like Morgan and described as a Lady of the Lake, or the "chief Lady of the Lake" in the case of Malory's Nimue. In Perceforest, the ancestry of both Merlin and the Lady of the Lake is descended from the ancient fairy Morgane (unrelated to Arthur's sister), who cursed their bloodline when she wrongly believed that her daughter was raped by her daughter's human lover.
Viviane's character in relation to Merlin is first found in the Lancelot-Grail cycle, after having been inserted into the legend of Merlin by either de Boron or his continuator. There are many different versions of their story. Common themes in most of them include Merlin actually having the prior prophetic knowledge of her plot against him (one exception is the Spanish Post-Vulgate Baladro where his foresight ability is explicitly dampened by sexual desire) but lacking either ability or will to counteract it in any way, along with her using one of his own spells to get rid of him. Usually (including in Le Morte d'Arthur), having learned everything she could from him, Viviane will then also replace the eliminated Merlin within the story, taking up his role as Arthur's adviser and court mage.
However, Merlin's fate of either demise or eternal imprisonment, along with his destroyer or captor's motivation (from her fear of Merlin and protecting her own virginity, to her jealousy of his relationship with Morgan), is recounted differently in variants of this motif. The exact form of his prison or grave can be also variably a cave, a tree, or hole either within or under a large rock (according to Le Morte d'Arthur, this happens somewhere in Benwick, the kingdom of Lancelot's father), or an invisible tower made of magic with no physical walls. The scene is often placed in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande, a legendary location today identified with the real-life Paimpont forest in Brittany. A Breton tradition cited by Roger Sherman Loomis in Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (where he also asserts that it "seems almost certain that Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Lake were originally the same person" in the legend) has Merlin trapped by his mistress inside a tree on the Île de Sein.
Niniane, as the Lady of the Lake student of Merlin is known in the Livre d'Artus continuation of Merlin, is mentioned as having broken his heart before his later second relationship with Morgan, but here the text does not tell how exactly Merlin did vanish, other than relating his farewell meeting with Blaise. In the Vulgate Lancelot, which predates the later Vulgate Merlin, she (aged just 12 at the time) makes Merlin sleep forever in a pit in the forest of Darnantes, "and that is where he remained, for never again did anyone see or hear of him or have news to tell of him." In the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin, the young King Bagdemagus (one of the early Knights of the Round Table) manages to find the rock under which Merlin is entombed alive by Niviene, as she is named there. He communicates with Merlin, but is unable to lift the stone; what follows next is supposedly narrated in the mysterious text Conte del Brait (Tale of the Cry). In Prophéties de Merlin, his tomb is unsuccessfully searched for by various parties, including Morgan and her enchantresses, but the tomb cannot be accessed due to the deadly magic traps around it, while the Lady of the Lake comes to taunt Merlin, asking if he has rotted yet.
One notably alternate version that has a happier ending for Merlin is the Premiers Faits section of the Livre du Graal, where Niniane peacefully confines him in Brocéliande with walls of air, visible only as a mist to others but as a beautiful yet unbreakable crystal tower to him (only Merlin's disembodied voice can escape his prison one last time when he speaks to Gawain on the knight's quest to find him), where they then spend almost every night together as lovers. Besides evoking the final scenes from Vita Merlini, this particular variant of their story also mirrors episodes found in some other texts, wherein Merlin either is an object of one-sided desire by a different amorous sorceress who too (unsuccessfully) plots to trap him or it is Merlin himself who traps an unwilling lover with his magic.
Unrelated to the legend of the Lady of the Lake, other purported sites of Merlin's burial include a cave deep inside Merlin's Hill (), outside Carmarthen. Carmarthen is also associated with Merlin more generally, including through the 13th-century manuscript known as the Black Book and the local lore of Merlin's Oak. In North Welsh tradition, Merlin retires to Bardsey Island (), where he lives in a house of glass () with the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain (). One site of his tomb is said to be Marlborough Mound in Wiltshire, known in medieval times as Merlebergia (the Abbot of Cirencester wrote in 1215: "Merlin's tumulus gave you your name, Merlebergia").
Another site associated with Merlin's burial, in his 'Merlin Silvestris' aspect, is the confluence of the Pausalyl Burn and River Tweed in Drumelzier, Scotland. The 15th-century Scotichronicon tells that Merlin himself underwent a triple-death, at the hands of some shepherds of the under-king Meldred: stoned and beaten by the shepherds, he falls over a cliff and is impaled on a stake, his head falls forward into the water, and he drowns. The fulfillment of another prophecy, ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer, came about when a spate of the Tweed and Pausayl occurred during the reign of the Scottish James VI and I on the English throne: "When Tweed and Pausayl meet at Merlin's grave, / Scotland and England one king shall have."
Modern culture
Merlin and stories involving him have continued to be popular from the Renaissance to the present day, especially since the renewed interest in the legend of Arthur in modern times. As noted by Arthurian scholar Alan Lupack, "numerous novels, poems and plays center around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture, Merlin is perhaps the most frequently portrayed Arthurian character." According to Stephen Thomas Knight, Merlin embodies a conflict between knowledge and power: beginning as a symbol of wisdom in the first Welsh stories, he became an advisor to kings in the Middle Ages, and eventually a mentor and teacher to Arthur and others in the works around the world since the 19th century. Since the Romantic period, Merlin has been typically depicted as a wise old man with a long white beard, creating a modern wizard archetype reflected in many fantasy characters, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Gandalf or J. K. Rowling's Dumbledore, who also use some of his other traits.
While some modern authors write about Merlin positively through an explicitly Christian world-view, some New Age movements instead see Merlin as a druid who accesses all the mysteries of the world. For instance, Merlin appears in the teachings of the Montana-based New Age religious-survivalist group Church Universal and Triumphant as one of their "ascended masters". Francophone artistic productions since the end of the 20th century have tended to avoid the Christian aspects of the character in favor of the pagan aspects and the tradition sylvestre (attributing positive values to one's links to forest and wild animals), thus "dechristianizing" Merlin to present him as a champion for the idea of return to nature. Diverging from his traditional role in medieval romances, Merlin is also sometimes portrayed as a villain. As Peter H. Goodrich wrote in Merlin: A Casebook:
Things named in honour of the legendary figure have included asteroid 2598 Merlin, the British company Merlin Entertainments, the handheld console Merlin, the literary magazine Merlin, the metal band Merlin, and more than a dozen different British warships each called HMS Merlin. He was one of eight British magical figures who were commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail in 2011, and one of the three Arthurian figures (along with Arthur and Morgan) commemorated on the gold and silver British pound coins issued by the Royal Mint in 2023. Merlinia, the Ordovician trilobite, is also named after Merlin; the name is given in memory of a Welsh legend in which the broken tail parts of trilobites were identified as butterflies turned to stone by Merlin.
See also
Garab Dorje, also said to have been conceived by a nun without a human father
Merlin's Cave, a location under Tintagel Castle
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Merlin: Texts, Images, Basic Information , Camelot Project at the University of Rochester. Numerous texts and art concerning Merlin
Timeless Myths: The Many Faces of Merlin
BBC audio file of the "Merlin" episode of In Our Time
Merlin — The Legend , a Chronicle documentary on YouTube
Prose Merlin, Introduction and Text (the University of Rochester TEAMS Middle English text series) edited by John Conlea, 1998. A selection of many passages of the prose Middle English translation of the Vulgate Merlin with connecting summary. The sections from "The Birth of Merlin to "Arthur and the Sword in the Stone" cover Robert de Boron's Merlin
Of Arthour and of Merlin translated and retold in modern English prose, the story from Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1 (the Auchinleck MS) (from the Middle English of the Early English Text Society edition: O D McCrae-Gibson, 1973, Of Arthour and of Merlin, 2 vols, EETS and Oxford University Press)
Phillip Walter (ed.), LE DEVIN MAUDIT Merlin, Lailoken, Suibhne — Textes et études by Philippe Walter, Christine Bord, Jean-Charles Berthet and Nathalie Stalmans. Moyen Âge européen, 1999. Earliest Merlin texts and studies on them, available to read for free at OpenEdition Books (in French)
Arthurian characters
Druids
English folklore
Fictional astronomers
Fictional characters with mental disorders
Fiction about the Antichrist
Fictional half-demons
Fictional humanoids
Fictional prophets
Fictional owls
Fictional shapeshifters
Fictional characters who use magic
Holy Grail
Incubi
Legendary Welsh people
Literary archetypes
Male characters in film
Male characters in literature
Male characters in television
Supernatural legends | Merlin | Astronomy | 7,482 |
60,530,881 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panaeolus%20affinis | Panaeolus affinis is a species of psychoactive mushroom belonging to the genus Panaeolus and is classified under the order Agaricales . Before the name of the species was changed in 1996, it was known as Copelandia affinis. The mushroom was first observed in 1980 by E. Horak. The mushroom contains the chemicals psilocybin and psilocin, which cause hallucinations and distorted perception of reality when ingested.
Drug use and ingestion
Although Panaeolus affinis is edible, it causes psychological effects if ingested due to the presence of the psilocybin. Because of this, it has been used by various cultures for shamanistic rituals and spiritual ceremonies, as well as recreationally to induce hallucination.
References
affinis
Psychoactive fungi
Fungus species | Panaeolus affinis | Biology | 171 |
71,825,654 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenous%20ooze | Biogenous ooze is marine sediment that accumulates on the seafloor and is a byproduct of the death and sink of the skeletal remains of marine organisms.
Formation and composition
Biogenous ooze consists of organic compounds, usually in the form of microorganism tests that fall from closer to the ocean surface to the ocean floor after death. For marine sediment to receive this classification, it must be composed of more than 30% skeletal material which also includes teeth and shells.
Types of biogenous sediments
The two primary types of ooze are siliceous, which is composed primarily of silica (), and calcareous or carbonate, which is mostly calcium carbonate (). In an area in which biogenous is the dominant sediment type, the composition of microorganisms in that location determines to which category it is classified. The primary types of microorganisms used to classify ooze are radiolarians and diatoms (siliceous), and coccolithophores and foraminifera (calcareous). The presence of these organisms can lead to sub-classifications based upon their dominance.
Siliceous
Along some areas of terrigenous sediment are siliceous ooze. This is due to siliceous ooze being more abundant in areas of cooler, more nutrient rich water. The nutrients allow for the abundant growth of microorganisms, and silica dissolves slower in cooler water, allowing adequate time for deposition.
Radiolarians and diatoms are the primary plankton used to classify siliceous ooze. Radiolaria is a part of a diverse group of plankton with transparent skeletons and come in a variety of shapes. They range in size from . They are most abundant in regions near the equator as well as subpolar regions. Diatoms are single-celled siliceous algae that are a major part of phytoplankton. They come in pinnate and centric shapes and range in size from .
Siliceous oozes lean towards dissolution in warmer waters with lower pressures, meaning they are best preserved in deep ocean.
Calcareous
Calcareous sediments are more common in the deep ocean, comprising about half of its surface area. However, the deepest parts of the ocean are dominated by abyssal clay instead.
Calcareous debris are mostly composed of forminiferal ooze and make about almost 50% of sediments on the seafloor. Calcareous oozes also have a terrigenous fraction made up of quartz and clay minerals.
This is because calcareous ooze is limited by the calcite compensation depth (CCD). The CCD refers to the depth at which the rate of supply of calcareous deposits equal the rate of dissolution and varies around the world and is based upon temperature. The CCD occurs at approximately 4000-5000 meters deep because calcium carbonate dissolves faster in cooler water, so as water temperature decreases with depth, its deposition rate also decreases. The temperature dependence also means that calcareous ooze is more likely to be present in warmer waters, which also leads to its dominance in shallow areas surrounding tropical and subtropical islands that do not have much terrigenous sediment runoff.
Another important depth is the lysocline, also known as the depth where well preserved calcareous grain are separated from poorly preserved ones. The lysocline occurs at approximately deep. Calcareous grains above the lysocline are able to accumulate without threat of dissolution.
Distribution
Despite the common association between shallow water and high productivity, biogenous ooze is not as common around continental shelves. This is due to the transport of terrigenous sediments by methods such as rivers and wind from the continents. The terrigenous sediment buries most accumulated organic material, preventing enough biological material from being present for it to be classified as biogenous.
Distribution of biogenous sediments is determined by three factors:
Distance from continents and land masses, the closer these sediments are to land masses the higher the likelihood of being diluted by terrigenous materials
Water depth, which affects the likelihood of preservation of the sediments
Ocean fertility, which helps dictate productivity in surface oceans
Accumulation rate of biogenous ooze is about 1cm per 1000 years.
Determination of climate history
In the fields of paleoceanography and paleoclimatology, biogenous ooze and other pelagic sediments can be collected form the seafloor and used to reconstruct Earth's climate for the last 100 million years.
Reconstruction can be done through analysis of biogeography, stable isotopes along with important oxygen and carbon isotopes.
References
Oceanography
Sediments
Sedimentary rocks | Biogenous ooze | Physics,Environmental_science | 975 |
59,493,125 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria%20Dubner | Gloria Dubner (born May 5, 1950) is an Argentinian astrophysicist and Director of the Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio in Buenos Aires and a Senior Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council. She is known for her research on supernovas.
Education
Dubner was born on May 5, 1950, in the city of Chajarí, located in the Entre Ríos Province in Argentina. She received her Licentiate degree in physics in 1974 from the University of Buenos Aires at the age of 23. She then attended National University of La Plata, where she received her PhD in physics in 1982 under the mentorship of astronomer and Guggenheim Fellow Fernando Raúl Colomb.
Research and career
Career trajectory
Between 1975 and 1987, Dubner worked at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy. In 1988, she began working at the Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio (IAFE). In 1997, she also was appointed as a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, continuing her study of supernovas. In 2009, she became the Director of IAFE and also serves as the Director of the Supernovas and Interstellar Environment group.
Research contributions
Dubner has participated in a number of international collaborations to study galactic supernova remnants. For instance, in 1994, she and her American collaborators Frank Winkler and W. Miller Gross were awarded a National Science Foundation grant to image the expanding shell of gas left over after a star explodes using data collected from radio telescopes in the US and Argentina.
Starting in 2015, Dubner also led a collaboration between five observatories that led to the production of the most detailed image produced of the Crab Nebula, a bright supernova explosion first observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054. The collaboration leveraged data collected at different wavelengths to create a composite image using: infrared data generated by the Spitzer Space Telescope from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope, ultraviolet data from the XMM-Newton operated by the European Space Agency, radio image and X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and radio data from the Very Large Array operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Leadership and recognition
Dubner is an active member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), serving on a variety of commissions including the Working Group for Historic Radio Astronomy, the Division for Interstellar Matter and Local Universe, and the Commission for Astrochemistry. In 2006, she served on the Organizing Committee to report advances in the field of radio astronomy between 2002 and 2005. In 2012, she was part of the organizing committee of the IAU's XXVIII General Assembly for Women in Astronomy Meeting. In June 2008, the minor planet 9515 Dubner was named in her honor, recognizing her achievements at the IAU. The planet was first discovered at the observatory in El Leoncito National Park in 1975. In 2023 she won the Platinum Konex Award as the most important physicist in Argentina.
References
Argentine women physicists
1950 births
Women astronomers
20th-century Argentine astronomers
University of Buenos Aires alumni
National University of La Plata alumni
Living people
21st-century Argentine astronomers | Gloria Dubner | Astronomy | 650 |
55,204,880 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%20Shadow%20Etched%20in%20Stone | is an exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is thought to be the shadow of a person who was sitting at the entrance of Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. It is also known as Human Shadow of Death or simply the Blast Shadow.
Background
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Little Boy atomic bomb was detonated at an altitude of over the city of Hiroshima, near the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. Among its other effects, it subjected the ground area to extremely high radiant temperatures for several seconds (higher than 1800 °C/3270 °F for less than 4 seconds). Because the duration of this high-temperature burn is so short, it does not have time to diffuse or be dissipated by thermal diffusion, leading to a situation in which the immediate surface of the affected object is raised to a very high temperature while very little temperature rise occurs beneath its surface. This effect was called the flash burn effect by investigators after the war, who studied it closely as the angles of the burn, and the specific changes to the surfaces, could be used to precisely determine explosion parameters after the fact, like its exact altitude, height of burst, and size of fireball. Through Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), examples were found of surfaces that were scorched by this direct, line-of-sight heat radiation, which also had some intervening object that shielded part of the same surface from the heat. This created "shadows" in which, for example, the paint of a building might ignite, except in the areas in which it was shielded. In another example, a polished stoney material (like granite) became roughened in the areas exposed to the heat (which caused crystals within it to expand), while the shadowed areas remained polished. The British mission to Hiroshima and Nagasaki noted in 1946 that the surfaces of asphalt roads "retained the 'shadows' of those who had walked there at the instant of the explosion," and judged them "objects of macabre interest and pilgrimage for visitors".
The "human shadow" at the entrance of the Sumitomo Bank was approximately from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima. It is thought that the person had been sitting on the stone step waiting for the bank to open when the heat from the bomb burned the surrounding stone white and left the person's shadow visible as a darkened area.
While the belief has persisted that it shows the remnant of a "vaporized" person, this has been shown to be scientifically impossible: the temperatures required to vaporize a human body in such a short amount of time exceed even the high temperatures experienced on the ground at Hiroshima. If the shadow is of a human being, it indicates that the person absorbed sufficient heat to significantly burn or alter the surface of the steps they were obscuring. Rather than vaporized or reduced to ash, the person would have any of their clothing or skin exposed to very high temperatures, and likely have been extremely burned, as well as subjected to the blast and radiation effects.
The person who cast the shadow almost certainly died immediately in the flash of the bomb. Witnesses reported seeing a person sitting at the entrance just before the explosion, and a soldier testified he had recovered the person's body. The museum exhibit claimed the shadow belonged to a 42-year-old woman named but conclusive proof of this claim cannot be determined and the victim's identity remains unknown.
In January 1971, part of the stone containing the artifact (3.3 meters wide by 2 meters high) was cut from the original location and moved to the museum. As the shadow had been degraded due to weathering, in April 1975, the museum began research into preserving the shadow. In 1991, the museum reported that earnest investigation of preservation methods had commenced. At present, the stone is surrounded by glass.
History
Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank
Human Shadow Etched in Stone was originally part of the stone steps at the entrance of the Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank, located 260 meters from ground zero. The current location of the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Hiroshima Branch is Kamiya-cho 1 Chome.
The bank was built in 1928. It was designed by at the department of engineering of Sumitomo Group (now Nikken Sekkei), and was constructed by the Obayashi Corporation. The building was constructed out of reinforced concrete, with four floors above ground and one below with an open ceiling up to the third floor. The rooms for business, reception and coinage were on the first floor, the meeting rooms and cafeteria on the fourth floor, and the boiler room in the basement. It was built south of the head office of Geibi Bank (Now head office of ,) which had been built the year before and was almost the same size. It was designed in a general Romanesque architectural style, and was characterized by a large arch with molding on its front facade.
The building was severely damaged in the bombing of August 6, 1945. Although most of the building's interior was destroyed, the coin room, cash, and passbooks were undamaged. Papers from inside the building were blown as far away as by the blast.
On the morning of the bombing, the bank was to be open as usual. Most of the employees were on their way to the office when the bomb was dropped. There were 29 employees killed immediately (including those in the branch and those on their way to work), 40 were injured and none missing. Some of the survivors died within a few days from radiation sickness, while others worked until retirement. Passersby took refuge in the building as it was close to ground zero, and a large number of bodies were recovered.
After the war, the Hiroshima Branch reopened. "The Human Shadow of Death" and the Atomic Bomb Dome quickly became landmarks for the bomb's destructive power and the loss of life. To preserve the shadow, in 1959 Sumitomo Bank built a fence surrounding the stone, and in 1967 the stone was covered with tempered glass to prevent its deterioration.
The Hiroshima Branch was rebuilt in 1971. The stone steps with the shadow were removed and donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
See also
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Notes
References
External links
Damage by the Heat Rays/Human Shadow Etched in Stone – Hiroshima City
Is it true that human beings vanished in the bomb's heat? – Chugoku Shimbun
Stone (material)
Monuments and memorials concerning the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Buildings and structures completed in 1928
Unidentified decedents
Monuments and memorials in Japan
Peace monuments and memorials
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
Shadows
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park | Human Shadow Etched in Stone | Physics | 1,356 |
40,212,550 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid%20Cryptofiler | Acid Cryptofiler is a cryptographic software program designed by the department for "control of information" (Centre d'Electronique de l'Armement) of the French General Directorate of Armament (Direction générale de l'armement). It is an online storage service. The software is now manufactured by ACID Technologies (France).
History
Acid Cryptofiler is on a list of cryptographic software approved for usage by the European Union and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and is known to have been used by those organizations as well as by the European Parliament and European Commission since the summer of 2011. It was approved for usage in the EU, in version V7, on 29 September 2011.
In January 2013, as the Red October campaign was being discovered, researchers noted that the malware particularly targeted documents with .acid extensions, referring to documents processed by Acid Cryptofiler, including the file extensions acidcsa, acidsca, aciddsk, acidpvr, acidppr, and acidssa.
Overview
Acid Cryptofiler is based on the integration of government cryptographic libraries, including a CCSD API (CCSD means "Defense Security Cryptographic Layers"). It offers the following functions:
Asymmetric encryption (cf. public-key cryptography) in archive format (multi-file, multi-recipient) called Acid Archives.
Volume encryption (containers) in symmetric mode and asymmetric mode.
Acid Cryptofiler is delivered with a directory function to file public keys, that is compliant with LDAP and Active Directory.
A bunch file contains all public keys held by a user. A user can belong to different cryptographic domains (a domain is a CCSD library and a set of cryptographic parameters). Private keys are also stored in a bunch file.
The keys are generated by a centralized office under the responsibility of the chief information security officer. Before a user is given a key (or a pair of keys), he/she must be trusted by the centralized office. In France, Acid Cryptofiler does not fit for defense classified information.
Acid Cryptofiler was designed and developed by the Direction générale de l'armement. . It runs on Microsoft Windows. The software is classified.
According to a book by Gérald Bronner, Acid Cryptofiler was so slow that sending an email took 10 minutes.
References
Cryptographic software | Acid Cryptofiler | Mathematics | 491 |
320,737 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankincense | Frankincense, also known as olibanum (), is an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus Boswellia in the family Burseraceae. The word is from Old French ('high-quality incense'). There are several species of Boswellia that produce true frankincense: Boswellia sacra (syn. B. bhaw-dajiana, syn. B. carteri), B. frereana, B. serrata (B. thurifera), and B. papyrifera. Resin from each is available in various grades, which depends on the time of harvesting. The resin is hand-sorted for quality.
Etymology
The English word frankincense derives from the Old French expression , meaning 'true incense', maybe with the sense of 'high quality incense'. The adjective in Old French meant 'noble, true', in this case perhaps 'pure'; although franc is ultimately derived from the tribal name of the Franks, it is not a direct reference to them in the word francincense.
The word for frankincense in the Koine Greek of the New Testament, (or ), is cognate with the name of Lebanon (); the same can be said with regard to Arabic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and . This is postulated to be because they both derive from the word for 'white' and that the spice route went via Mount Lebanon ().
derived from or . The leading "o" may have come from , or from the Greek article o- or Arabic article al-. Other names include , , , , , , , .
Description
The trees start producing resin at about eight to 10 years old. Tapping is done two to three times per year with the final taps producing the best tears because of their higher aromatic terpene, sesquiterpene and diterpene content. Generally speaking, the more opaque resins are the best quality. Today 90 percent of the world's production of frankincense comes from the Horn of Africa, predominantly from the border communities on the Somalia–Ethiopia border.
The main species in trade are:
Boswellia frereana grows in northern Somalia.
Boswellia occulta: Somalia. For a long time Somali harvesters considered Boswellia occulta to be the same species as Boswellia carteri even though their shapes are different, and sold resins from both species as the same thing. However in 2019, it was clear that the chemical compositions of their essential oils are completely different.
Boswellia sacra: Somalia, South Arabia.
Boswellia bhaw-dajiana (older spelling Boswellia bhau-dajiana) It is a synonym of Boswellia sacra
Boswellia carteri (older spelling Boswellia carterii): It was long considered an independent species, but in the 1980s it was determined to be a synonym of Boswellia sacra.
Boswellia serrata (synonym Boswellia thurifera): India.
Boswellia papyrifera: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan.
Recent studies indicate that frankincense tree populations are declining, partly from overexploitation. Heavily tapped trees produce seeds that germinate at only 16% while seeds of trees that had not been tapped germinate at more than 80%. In addition, burning, grazing, and attacks by the longhorn beetle have reduced the tree population. Clearing of frankincense woodlands for conversion to agriculture is also a major threat.
Chemical composition
These are some of the chemical compounds present in frankincense:
acid resin (6%), soluble in alcohol and having the formula C20H32O4
gum (similar to gum arabic) 30–36%
3-acetyl-beta-boswellic acid (Boswellia sacra)
alpha-boswellic acid (Boswellia sacra)
incensole acetate, C21H34O3
phellandrene
olibanic acid
Among various plants in the genus Boswellia, only Boswellia sacra, Boswellia serrata and Boswellia papyrifera have been confirmed to contain significant amounts of boswellic acids.
History
Frankincense has been traded on the Somali and Arabian Peninsula for more than 5,000 years. Greek historian Herodotus wrote in The History that frankincense was harvested from trees in southern Arabia. He reported that the gum was dangerous to harvest because of winged snakes that guard the trees and that the smoke from burning storax would drive the snakes away. Pliny the Elder also mentioned frankincense in his Naturalis Historia.
Frankincense, which was used in the Roman Empire prior to the spread of Christianity, was reintroduced to Western Europe possibly by Frankish Crusaders and other Western Europeans on their journeys to the Eastern Roman Empire, where it was commonly used in church services. Although named frankincense, the name refers to the quality of incense brought to Western Europe, not to the Franks themselves.
Southern Arabia was an exporter of frankincense in antiquity, with some of it being traded as far as China. The 13th-century Chinese writer and customs inspector Zhao Rugua wrote that or (Chinese: / ) comes from the three Dashi states (Chinese: – Caliphate (Arab Muslims)) of Maloba (Murbat), Shihe (Shihr), and Nufa (Dhofar), from the depths of the remotest mountains; the trunk of the tree is notched with a hatchet, upon which the resin flows out, and, when hardened, turns into incense, which is gathered and made into lumps; it is transported on elephants to the Dashi ports, then on ship to Sanfoqi; which is why it was known as a product of Sanfoqi.
In Christian tradition, frankincense is one of the gifts given by the Biblical Magi to Jesus at his nativity as described in the Gospel of Matthew.
Production
Thousands of tons of frankincense are traded every year to be used in religious ceremonies as incense in thuribles and by makers of perfumes, natural medicines, and essential oils.
Somalia
In Somalia, frankincense is harvested in the Bari and Sanaag regions: mountains lying at the northwest of Erigavo; El Afweyn District; Cal Madow mountain range, a westerly escarpment that runs parallel to the coast; Cal Miskeed, including Hantaara and Habeeno plateau and a middle segment of the frankincense-growing escarpment; Karkaar mountains or eastern escarpment, which lies at the eastern fringe of the frankinscence escarpment.
Oman
In Dhofar, Oman, frankincense species grow north of Salalah. It was traded in the ancient coastal city of Sumhuram, now Khor Rori, and Al-Baleed, an ancient port. In 2000, UNESCO inscribed the sites as a World Heritage Site Land of Frankincense.
Ecological status
In 1998, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned that one of the primary frankincense species, Boswellia sacra, is "near threatened". Frankincense trees are not covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but experts argue that Boswellia species meet the criteria for protection. In a 2006 study, an ecologist at Wageningen University & Research claimed that, by the late-1990s, Boswellia papyrifera trees in Eritrea were becoming hard to find. In 2019, a new paper predicted a 50% reduction in Boswellia papyrifera within the next two decades. This species, found mainly in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan, accounts for about two-thirds of global frankincense production. The paper warns that all Boswellia species are threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation. Most Boswellia grow in harsh, arid regions beset by poverty and conflict. Harvesting and selling the tree's resin is one of the few sources of income for the inhabitants, resulting in overtapping.
Research
Limited clinical studies have provided weak evidence for the use of frankincense resin in certain disease conditions, but the inconsistent, low quality of research remains inconclusive for determining any effect.
Uses
The Egyptians cleansed body cavities in the mummification process with frankincense and natron. In Persian medicine, it is used for diabetes, gastritis and stomach ulcer. The oil is used in Abrahamic religions to cleanse a house or building of bad or evil energy—including used in exorcisms and to bless one's being (like the bakhoor commonly found in Persian Gulf cultures by spreading the fumes towards the body).
The incense offering occupied a prominent position in the sacrificial legislation of the ancient Hebrews. The Book of Exodus (30:34–38) prescribes frankincense, blended with equal amounts of three aromatic spices, to be ground and burnt in the sacred altar before the Ark of the Covenant in the wilderness Tabernacle, where it was meant to be a holy offering—not to be enjoyed for its fragrance. Scholars have identified frankincense as what the Book of Jeremiah (6:20) relates was imported from Sheba during the 6th century BC Babylonian captivity. Frankincense is mentioned in the New Testament as one of the three gifts (with gold and myrrh) that the magi "from the East" presented to the Christ Child ().
In traditional Chinese medicine, frankincense ( ) along with myrrh ( ) are considered to have anti-bacterial properties and blood-moving uses. It can be used topically or orally, also used in surgical and internal medicine of traditional Chinese medicine. It is used to relieve pain, remove blood stasis, promote blood circulation and treat deafness, stroke, locked jaw, and abnormalities in women's menstruation.
Essential oil
The essential oil of frankincense is produced by steam distillation of the tree resin. The oil's chemical components are 75% monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, and ketones. Contrary to some commercial claims, steam distilled frankincense oils do not contain the insufficiently volatile boswellic acids (triterpenoids), although they may be present in solvent extractions. The chemistry of the essential oil is mainly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes, such as alpha-pinene, Limonene, alpha-Thujene, and beta-Pinene with small amounts of diterpenoid components being the upper limit in terms of molecular weight.
Essential oils can be diluted and applied to skin or the fragrance can be inhaled.
See also
Trade
Land of Frankincense (Frankincense Trail), site in Oman
Incense trade route, a large network around the Mediterranean and beyond
Nabataeans, a trader tribe
Literature
Desi Sangye Gyatso, author of a Tibetan herbal
Historia Plantarum (Theophrastus book)
Similar plants and products
Elemi, resin or tree
Myrrh, resin
Palo santo (Bursera graveolens), tree
Agarwood
Benzoin (resin)
Copal
References
Further reading
External links
Incense material
Resins
Plant products | Frankincense | Physics,Chemistry | 2,373 |
37,268,062 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%282-Chlorophenyl%29thiourea | (2-Chlorophenyl)thiourea is a chemical compound used as an herbicide. As of 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency did not have it registered as a pesticide in the United States.
References
Herbicides
Thioureas
2-Chlorophenyl compounds | (2-Chlorophenyl)thiourea | Chemistry,Biology | 62 |
2,011,471 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%20perchlorate | Sodium perchlorate is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It consists of sodium cations and perchlorate anions . It is a white crystalline, hygroscopic solid that is highly soluble in water and ethanol. It is usually encountered as sodium perchlorate monohydrate . The compound is noteworthy as the most water-soluble of the common perchlorate salts.
Sodium perchlorate and other perchlorates has been found on the planet Mars, first detected by the NASA probe Phoenix in 2009. This was later confirmed by spectral analysis by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015 of what is thought to be brine seeps which may be the first evidence of flowing liquid water containing hydrated salts on Mars.
Selected properties
Its heat of formation is −382.75 kJ/mol, i.e. it is thermally stable up to high temperatures. At 490 °C it undergoes thermal decomposition, producing sodium chloride and dioxygen.
It crystallizes in the rhombic crystal system.
Uses
Perchloric acid is made by treating with HCl. Ammonium perchlorate and potassium perchlorate, of interest in rocketry and pyrotechnics, are prepared by double decomposition from a solution of sodium perchlorate and ammonium chloride or potassium chloride, respectively.
Laboratory applications
Because of its high solubility (2096 g/L at 25 °C) and the inert behaviour of dissolved perchlorate, solutions of are often used as unreactive background electrolyte (supporting electrolyte). Indeed, because the reduction reaction of perchlorate is kinetically limited even if it is a thermodynamically unstable compound, perchlorate is a redox non-sensitive anion. It is also a non-complexing anion with a fairly low ligand binding capacity.
In the past perchlorates were quite widely used in the synthesis of coordination compounds because their larger size (compared to halides) and excellent hydrogen bonding abilities made them highly effective counter-ions for complexes with ammine, aquo and halido ligands, often yielding highly crystalline products. However because of the hazards (see Safety Section below) associated with their use they have been largely superseded in most labs by much less risky counterions like fluoroborate (BF4–, PF6– and related anions.
Sodium perchlorate is the precursor to ammonium, potassium and lithium perchlorate salts, often taking advantage of their low solubility in water relative to (209 g/(100 mL) at 25 °C).
It is used for denaturating proteins in biochemistry and in standard DNA extraction and hybridization reactions in molecular biology.
In medicine
Sodium perchlorate can be used to block iodine uptake before administration of iodinated contrast agents in patients with subclinical hyperthyroidism (suppressed TSH).
Production
Sodium perchlorate is produced by anodic oxidation of sodium chlorate () at an inert electrode, such as platinum.
(acidic medium)
(alkaline medium)
Safety
All perchlorates are potent oxidisers. When mixed with organic compounds extreme combustion reactions can result, hence the use of such materials in fireworks, low tech rocket propellants and improvised explosives. Because of their kinetic inertness mixtures of perchlorate with organic compounds can ignite/detonate spontaneously and be shock sensitive.
Acute toxicity: The median lethal dose (LD50) is 2 – 4 g/kg (rabbits, oral).
Chronic toxicity: The frequent consumption of drinking water with low concentrations (in the range of μg/L, ppb) of perchlorate is harmful for the thyroid gland as the perchlorate anion competes with the uptake of iodide severely disrupting thyroid function.
Environmental effects: Perchlorate anions are regarded as persistent pollutants that can cause long term contamination of drinking water and NaClO4's high solubility makes it highly mobile in the environment. Significant concerns have been raised about the environmental impacts of perchlorates because of its ability to disrupt iodide uptake and metabolism.
See also
Potassium perchlorate
References
External links
WebBook page for NaClO4
Perchlorates
Sodium compounds
Deliquescent materials | Sodium perchlorate | Chemistry | 882 |
10,665,011 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20quantum-mechanical%20potentials | This is a list of potential energy functions that are frequently used in quantum mechanics and have any meaning.
One-dimensional potentials
Rectangular potential barrier
Delta potential (aka "contact potential")
Double delta potential
Step potential
Periodic potential
Barrier potential
Gaussian potential
Eckart potential
Wells
Quantum well
Potential well
Finite potential well
Infinite potential well
Double-well potential
Semicircular potential well
Circular potential well
Spherical potential well
Triangular potential well
Interatomic potentials
Interatomic potential
Bond order potential
EAM potential
Coulomb potential
Buckingham potential
Lennard-Jones potential
Morse potential
Morse/Long-range potential
Rosen–Morse potential
Trigonometric Rosen–Morse potential
Stockmayer potential
Pöschl–Teller potential
Axilrod–Teller potential
Mie potential
Oscillators
Harmonic potential (harmonic oscillator)
Morse potential (morse oscillator)
Morse/Long-range potential (Morse/Long-range oscillator)
Kratzer potential (Kratzer oscillator)
Quantum Field theory
Yukawa potential
Coleman–Weinberg potential
Uehling potential
Woods–Saxon potential
Cornell potential
Miscellaneous
Quantum potential
Pseudopotential
Superpotential
Komar superpotential
Kolos–Wolniewicz potential
See also
List of quantum-mechanical systems with analytical solutions
List of integrable models
Science-related lists
Quantum mechanical potentials | List of quantum-mechanical potentials | Physics | 270 |
1,118,626 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert%20Akroyd%20Stuart | Herbert Akroyd-Stuart (28 January 1864 – 19 February 1927) was an English inventor who is noted for his invention of the hot bulb engine, or heavy oil engine.
Life
Akroyd-Stuart was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, but lived in Australia for a period in his early years. He was educated at Newbury Grammar School (now St. Bartholomew's School) and Finsbury Technical College in London. He was the son of Charles Stuart, founder of the Bletchley Iron and Tinplate Works, joining his father in the business in 1887.
Oil engines
In 1885, Akroyd Stuart accidentally spilt paraffin oil (kerosene) into a pot of molten tin. The paraffin oil vaporised and caught fire when in contact with a paraffin lamp. This gave him an idea to pursue the possibility of using paraffin oil (very similar to modern-day diesel) for an engine, which unlike petrol proved difficult to vaporise in a carburettor because its volatility is insufficient.
His first prototype engines were built in 1886. In 1890, in collaboration with Charles Richard Binney, he filed Patent 7146 for Richard Hornsby and Sons of Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. The patent was entitled: Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air. One such engine was sold to Newport Sanitary Authority, but the compression ratio was too low to get it started from cold, and it needed a heat poultice to get it going.
Hornsby–Akroyd engine
Akroyd-Stuart's engines were built from 26 June 1891 by Richard Hornsby and Sons as the Hornsby Akroyd Patent Oil Engine under licence and were first sold commercially on 8 July 1892. It was the first internal combustion engine to use a pressurised fuel injection system.
The Hornsby–Akroyd engine used a comparatively low compression ratio, so that the temperature of the air compressed in the combustion chamber at the end of the compression stroke was not high enough to initiate combustion. Combustion instead took place in a separated combustion chamber, the vaporizer (also called the hot bulb) mounted on the cylinder head, into which fuel was sprayed. It was connected to the cylinder by a narrow passage and was heated either by the cylinder's coolant or by exhaust gases while running; an external flame such as a blowtorch was used for starting. Self-ignition occurred from contact between the fuel-air mixture and the hot walls of the vaporizer. By contracting the bulb to a very narrow neck where it attached to the cylinder, a high degree of turbulence was set up as the ignited gases flashed through the neck into the cylinder, where combustion was completed. As the engine's load increased, so did the temperature of the bulb, causing the ignition period to advance; to counteract pre-ignition, water was dripped into the air intake.
Hot bulb engines were produced until the late 1920s, often being called semi-diesels, even though they were not as efficient as compression ignition engines. They had the advantage of comparative simplicity, since they did not require the air compressor used by early Diesel engines; fuel was injected mechanically (solid injection) near the start of the compression stroke, at a much lower pressure than that of Diesel engines.
Oil-engined locomotive
Richard Hornsby and Sons built the world's first oil-engined railway locomotive LACHESIS for the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, England, in 1896. They also built the first compression-ignition powered automobile.
Oil engines outside the UK
Sweden
Similar engines were built by Bolinder in Sweden and some of these still survive in canal boats.
United States
Hot bulb engines were built in the USA by the De La Vergne Company of New York City, later the New York Refrigerating Company – inventing the modern refrigerator in 1930, who purchased a licence in 1893.
Akroyd engine and Diesel engine
Both the Diesel engine and the Akroyd engine run the same kind of fuel, petroleum oil, which has led to a dispute about whether or not the Diesel engine is based upon the Akroyd engine. The fact that the Diesel engine's operating principle differs from the operating principle Rudolf Diesel describes in his essay Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor further contributed to this. The Akroyd engine was the first functional internal combustion engine that could use petroleum oil as fuel. It was operational in 1891, six years before the Diesel engine first ran. However, after the Diesel engine had proven successful, Diesel engine became the synonym for an engine that ran on any sort of petroleum oil. Oil engines that used the Akroyd operating principle were called semi-Diesel, and the name Akroyd, which had been associated with oil engines, fell out of use. Therefore, Herbert Akroyd Stuart sought to replace the term Diesel engine with Akroyd engine in the early 20th century.
Herbert Akroyd Stuart had two patents, No. 7146 Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air, and No. 15994. In the former, the Akroyd engine's operating principle is described as follows: "... at the desired part of this compression stroke, the supply of liquid hydrocarbon is forced, in a spray form, on to the heated vaporiser, which almost instantly changes it into a gas...". Early Akroyd engines indeed operated on this principle. Rudolf Diesel had a patent on the combustion process described in his essay (DRP 67207). The Diesel engine neither operates on the process described in the Akroyd patent, nor on the process described in the DRP 67207 patent. It operates instead on a different operating principle, also invented by Rudolf Diesel (patented in 1893, DRP 82168), which is why Diesel is in fact the Diesel engine's inventor. However, Diesel never admitted that his engine operated on a secret operating principle, and claimed that the Diesel engine operates on the (impossible) operating process described in the DRP 67207 patent.
The key difference between the Akroyd and Diesel engines is the ignition: In an Akroyd engine, an ignition devicethe hot bulb, or vaporiserignites the fuel, because the compression is too low for compression ignition (<300 kPa). A Diesel engine on the other hand has no discrete ignition devices. The fuel instead ignites due to high heat caused solely by piston compression inside the cylinder (>3000 kPa). Since higher compression leads to better efficiency, the lower-pressure Akroyd engine consumes ~ 80% more fuel than a Diesel engine doing the same work.
Death
In 1900, he moved to Australia and set up a company Sanders & Stuart with his brother Charles. He died on 19 February 1927 in Perth, Australia of throat cancer. His body was transported back to England and was buried in All Souls Cemetery in Boothtown, Halifax, Yorkshire. All Souls Church was built at the sole expense of his maternal uncle, Edward Akroyd.
The University of Nottingham has hosted the Akroyd-Stuart Memorial Lecture on occasional years in his memory since 1928. One was presented by Sir Frank Whittle in 1946. Akroyd Stuart had worked with Professor William Robinson in the late 19th century, who was professor of engineering from 1890 to 1924 at University College Nottingham.
Akroyd-Stuart also left money to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Royal Aeronautical Society and Institute of Marine Engineering, which provided for their respective bi-annual Akroyd-Stuart Prizes.
See also
History of the internal combustion engine
Notes
External links
Biography
Relation to the Ruston and Hornsby history.
History of his Oil Engine at the Anson Engine Museum
De La Vergne Oil Engine used for Marconi's first broadcast
IMechE Herbert Akroyd Prize (sic)
Immortalised by naming a range of bollards after him
All Souls Church, Halifax
Patents
US Patent 845140 Combustion Engine, dated 26 February 1907.
US Patent 502837 Engine operated by the explosion of mixtures of gas or hydrocarbon vapor and air, dated 8 August 1893.
US Patent 439702 Petroleum Engine or Motor, dated 4 November 1890.
1864 births
1927 deaths
English mechanical engineers
Stationary engines
People associated with the internal combustion engine
People from Halifax, West Yorkshire
Academics of the University of Nottingham
People educated at St. Bartholomew's School
British people in colonial Australia | Herbert Akroyd Stuart | Technology | 1,723 |
31,484,557 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%81nis%20Polis | Jānis Polis (25 June 1938 – 12 April 2011) was a Soviet and Latvian pharmacologist and the developer of one of the first methods of synthesis of rimantadine, which was discovered in 1963 by William W. Prichard of Du Pont & Co. He was born in Eleja parish, Latvia. On 6 February 2009, Polis was awarded the WIPO Award for Outstanding Inventors. Polis died in Riga, Latvia on 12 April 2011 at the age of 72.
References
Further reading
1938 births
2011 deaths
20th-century Latvian inventors
Soviet inventors
Latvian health professionals
20th-century Latvian scientists
Pharmacologists
People from Jelgava Municipality
Riga Technical University alumni
Soviet chemists
21st-century Latvian scientists | Jānis Polis | Chemistry | 150 |
1,591,917 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willemite | Willemite is a zinc silicate mineral () and a minor ore of zinc. It is highly fluorescent (green) under shortwave ultraviolet light. It occurs in a variety of colors in daylight, in fibrous masses and apple-green gemmy masses. Troostite is a variant in which part of the zinc is partly replaced by manganese, it occurs in solid brown masses.
It was discovered in 1829 in the Belgian Vieille-Montagne mine. Armand Lévy was shown samples by a student at the university where he was teaching. Lévy named it after William I of the Netherlands
(it is occasionally spelled villemite).
The troostite variety is named after Dutch-American mineralogist Gerard Troost.
Occurrence
Willemite is usually formed as an alteration of previously existing sphalerite ore bodies, and is usually associated with limestone. It is also found in marble and may be the result of a metamorphism of earlier hemimorphite or smithsonite. Crystals have the form of hexagonal prisms terminated by rhombohedral planes: there are distinct cleavages parallel to the prism-faces and to the base. Granular and cleavage masses are of more common occurrence. It occurs in many places, but is best known from Arizona and the zinc, iron, manganese deposits at Franklin and Sterling Hill Mines in New Jersey. It often occurs with red zincite (zinc oxide) and franklinite ( (an iron rich zinc mineral occurring in sharp black isometric octahedral crystals and masses). Franklinite and zincite are not fluorescent.
Uses
Artificial willemite was used as the basis of first-generation fluorescent tube phosphors. When doped with manganese ions, it fluoresces with a broad white emission band. Some versions had some of the zinc replaced with beryllium. In the 1940s it was largely replaced by second-generation halophosphors based on fluorapatite. These, in turn have been replaced by the third-generation TriPhosphors.
See also
List of minerals
List of minerals named after people
References
External links
Nesosilicates
Zinc minerals
Trigonal minerals
Minerals in space group 148
Luminescent minerals
Minerals described in 1829 | Willemite | Chemistry | 452 |
76,350,521 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%20Allen%20Cohen | Daniel Allen Cohen is a Los Angeles-based multi-media artist best known for his platform, This is Addictive, which highlights adult cravings and material obsessions using imagery often associated with childhood nostalgia.
His series, Periodic Table of Drugs, parodies the format of the scientific periodic table but instead of cataloguing natural elements, Cohen catalogues a variety of narcotics. Cohen has shown his work at art fairs including SCOPE Art Show in Miami and the L.A. Art Show. In 2021, Cohen released his first non-fungible token art on Nifty Gateway's digital marketplace.
Work
Made from a variety of materials, including: wood, acrylic paint, metal, graphic design and digital alterations, Cohen's work satirizes consumer habits associated with youth culture in Western society. Incorporating substances, such as drugs, chocolate and diamonds, that are associated with decadence and often abused, Cohen is able to address the glamorization of addiction.
Score (2015)
In this series, Cohen comments on the increase of drug use, and ease of its availability, in the United States. Using the format of a nutrition label that lists ingredients in packaged food, he lists the effects of recreational drugs. In addition to creating these labels for actual drugs, Cohen invents drugs, like "Insta-Fame" pills and "Poor & Suffering Relief" pills.
Precious Bars (2016)
In 2016, Cohen released his Precious Bars series where he fabricated stacks of money and gold bars wrapped in the packaging of branded chocolate bars that were altered slightly. The iconic Mr. Goodbar, in Cohen's version, was changed to "Mr. Goldbar."
Periodic Table of Drugs (2017)
In this ongoing series, Cohen parodies the Periodic Table of Elements which outlines life-sustaining elements like Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. By featuring recreational drugs instead of chemical elements, Cohen illustrates the irony surrounding which substances are valued in contemporary society.
References
Living people
Multimedia artists
American artists
Contemporary art
Year of birth missing (living people) | Daniel Allen Cohen | Technology | 414 |
11,568,769 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pichia%20membranifaciens | Pichia membranifaciens is a species of yeast.
References
Saccharomycetes
Fungal strawberry diseases
Fungi described in 1904
Fungus species | Pichia membranifaciens | Biology | 31 |
23,439,954 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBS%20Letters | FEBS Letters is a not-for-profit peer-reviewed scientific journal published on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) by Wiley. It covers all aspects of molecular biosciences, including molecular biology and biochemistry. The aim of the journal is to publish primary research in the form of Research Articles, Research Letters, Communications and Hypotheses, as well as secondary research in the form of Review articles. The journal also publishes a News and Views column called "The Scientists' Forum". The editorial office of FEBS Letters is based in Heidelberg, Germany. The journal income is reinvested in science.
History
The initial idea of FEBS Letters as a journal for rapid communication of short reports in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology was proposed by the Secretary General of FEBS, W.J. Whelan, at the 4th FEBS Meeting held in Oslo in 1967. After further discussions and preparations, the first issue of FEBS Letters appeared in July 1968 with Satya Prakash Datta acting as Managing Editor. The initial editorial policy urged the authors to submit their manuscripts directly to a member of the editorial board, who independently evaluated them and, if needed, consulted external referees. Apart from original research articles, early on FEBS Letters started publishing short reviews, hypotheses, discussion articles and meeting reports, as well as a number of supplements to regular issues extensively covering topical subjects. In 2000 the handling of manuscripts was centralized and the editorial process amended and standardized.
Satya Prakash Datta, who served as Managing Editor until 1985, was succeeded by Giorgio Semenza (1986-2000) and Matti Saraste (2000-2001). Between 2001 and 2021, the Managing Editor was Felix Wieland. The current Editor in Chief is Michael Brunner.
The journal published 144 articles in 1968, and from then on steadily increased its output to reach an all-time high of 1733 published articles in 1999.
Editorial and publishing concept
FEBS Letters staff consists of the Editor in Chief, the Editorial Office and the editorial board. The editorial board is composed of Academic Editors, who are active scientists working in different fields of the molecular biosciences.
In accordance with the Editor in Chief, the staff at the Editorial Office evaluates all submissions based on editorial policy and general scientific criteria. Manuscripts that pass through the pre-screening process are distributed to appropriate Academic Editors. The Academic Editors evaluate the manuscripts, supervise the peer-review process and make final decisions autonomously. The handling time from submission to first decision is on average 2.3 weeks. Manuscripts accepted for publication are processed by Wiley and published online, bundled in 24 issues per year.
FEBS Letters follows a typical scientific society publishing model, where the income generated by the journal is used by FEBS to fund its activities, i.e. FEBS fellowships, advanced courses and workshops, congresses, and travel grants.
Special Issues
Special Issues are collections of topical Review articles written by distinguished scientists covering the latest developments on specific topics in the molecular biosciences. Special Issue articles are commissioned, but, nevertheless, undergo the usual evaluation procedure exerted by the journal. Every year a Special Issue is directly associated with the FEBS Congress and consists of a compilation of Review articles contributed by speakers presenting their work at the congress.
Access
All accepted articles are published online by Wiley on behalf of FEBS. The FEBS Letters archive is completely digitalized and available back to the first issue in 1968. FEBS Letters follows a subscription-based model with a delayed and hybrid open access policy. All articles are made available to non-subscribers for free after 12 months, with Review articles being available for free immediately.
FEBS Letters Award
Every other year FEBS Letters offers a prestigious prize of €10,000 to the senior author of an outstanding Research Letter published in FEBS Letters during the previous two calendar years. The winning article is selected in an unbiased fashion by a special Award Committee formed by appointed members of the editorial board plus one external member. The awardee is invited to give a plenary lecture at the FEBS Congress, where she/he is presented with the award. The award has been presented regularly since 2003.
Winners
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is indexed in:
References
External links
Journal homepage
Molecular and cellular biology journals
Biochemistry journals
Wiley (publisher) academic journals
Semi-monthly journals
English-language journals
Academic journals established in 1968
Delayed open access journals
Hybrid open access journals
Academic journals associated with learned and professional societies | FEBS Letters | Chemistry | 912 |
52,822,602 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%20A.%20Ibers | James A. Ibers was the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry before becoming an emeritus professor of chemistry at Northwestern University upon retirement. He is recognized for contributions to inorganic chemistry, especially in the areas of coordination chemistry, bio-inorganic chemistry, solid state synthesis and X-ray crystallography. Ibers passed on December 14, 2021, at the age of 91.
Education
Ibers received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at California Institute of Technology. His thesis, awarded in 1954, was done under the direction of Verner F. Schomoker and James H. Sturdivant.
Career
After graduation, Ibers accepted a staff scientist position at Shell Development Company and later Brookhaven National Laboratory. Starting in 1965 until his retirement, Ibers was a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. His broad research interests included many aspects of organometallic, bioinorganic, and solid state chemistry,. Ibers was a noted pioneer in the applications of X-Ray Crystallography to chemical problems and issues associated with inorganic bonding.
References
Inorganic chemists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Solid state chemists
Northwestern University faculty
California Institute of Technology alumni
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science | James A. Ibers | Chemistry | 256 |
39,686,187 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StyleHaul | StyleHaul was a marketing services, media, and technology company which gained recognition as an early pioneer of branded content and native advertising on digital platforms. The company was founded in 2011 by Stephanie Horbaczewski and operated as a portfolio company of RTL Group, which paid $127 million USD to acquire a controlling stake in the company in 2014.
StyleHaul was known for its large-scale influencer and paid media campaigns for major beauty brands and retailers, such as Sephora, Maybelline, and Walgreens, as well as for its high-profile talent network, which has included creators like Zoella, Ashley Tisdale, Chloe Lukasiak and Joey Graceffa.
In 2018, StyleHaul founder and CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski left the company in order to launch an artificial intelligence startup, Vody, alongside former StyleHaul Chief Technology Officer, Jeremy Houghton. In 2019, StyleHaul shuttered operations, which coincided with the arrest and guilty plea of Dennis Blieden, 29, a former StyleHaul executive and professional poker player who embezzled $22 million from the company to pay his poker debts, personal debts and bad investments in cryptocurrencies.
References
External links
Marketing companies of the United States | StyleHaul | Technology | 257 |
4,062,934 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomics | Phenomics is the systematic study of traits that make up an organisms phenotype,
which changes over time, due to development and aging or through metamorphosis such as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly. The term phenomics was coined by UC Berkeley and LBNL scientist Steven A. Garan. As such, it is a transdisciplinary area of research that involves biology, data sciences, engineering and other fields. Phenomics is concerned with the measurement of the phenotype where a phenome is a set of traits (physical and biochemical traits) that can be produced by a given organism over the course of development and in response to genetic mutation and environmental influences.
An organism's phenotype changes with time. The relationship between phenotype and genotype enables researchers to understand and study pleiotropy. Phenomics concepts are used in functional genomics, pharmaceutical research, metabolic engineering, agricultural research, and increasingly in phylogenetics.
Technical challenges involve improving, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the capacity to measure phenomes.
Applications
Plant sciences
In plant sciences, phenomics research occurs in both field and controlled environments. Field phenomics encompasses the measurement of phenotypes that occur in both cultivated and natural conditions, whereas controlled environment phenomics research involves the use of glass houses, growth chambers, and other systems where growth conditions can be manipulated. The University of Arizona's Field Scanner in Maricopa, Arizona is a platform developed to measure field phenotypes. Controlled environment systems include the Enviratron at Iowa State University, the Plant Cultivation Hall under construction at IPK, and platforms at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and elsewhere.
Standards, methods, tools, and instrumentation
A Minimal Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment (MIAPPE) standard is available and in use among many researchers collecting and organizing plant phenomics data. A diverse set of computer vision methods exist to analyze 2D and 3D imaging data of plants. These methods are available to the community in various implementations, ranging from end-user ready cyber-platforms in the cloud such as DIRT and PlantIt to programming frameworks for software developers such as PlantCV. Many research groups are focused on developing systems using the Breeding API, a Standardized RESTful Web Service API Specification for communicating Plant Breeding Data.
The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF), an initiative of the Australian government, has developed a number of new instruments for comprehensive and fast measurements of phenotypes in both the lab and the field.
Research coordination and communities
The International Plant Phenotyping Network (IPPN) is an organization that seeks to enable exchange of knowledge, information, and expertise across many disciplines involved in plant phenomics by providing a network linking members, platform operators, users, research groups, developers, and policy makers. Regional partners include, the European Plant Phenotyping Network (EPPN), the North American Plant Phenotyping Network (NAPPN), and others.
The European research infrastructure for plant phenotyping, EMPHASIS, enables researchers to use facilities, services and resources for multi-scale plant phenotyping across Europe. EMPHASIS aims to promote future food security and agricultural business in a changing climate by enabling scientists to better understand plant performance and translate this knowledge into application.
See also
PhenomicDB, a database combining phenotypic and genetic data from several species
Phenotype microarray
Human Phenotype Ontology, a formal ontology of human phenotypes
References
Further reading
Branches of biology
Omics | Phenomics | Biology | 747 |
39,214,059 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose%E2%80%93Vinet%20equation%20of%20state | The Rose–Vinet equation of state is a set of equations used to describe the equation of state of solid objects. It is a modification of the Birch–Murnaghan equation of state.
The initial paper discusses how the equation only depends on four inputs: the isothermal bulk modulus , the derivative of bulk modulus with respect to pressure , the volume , and the thermal expansion; all evaluated at zero pressure () and at a single (reference) temperature. The same equation holds for all classes of solids and a wide range of temperatures.
Let the cube root of the specific volume be
then the equation of state is:
A similar equation was published by Stacey et al. in 1981.
References
Solid mechanics
Equations of state | Rose–Vinet equation of state | Physics | 147 |
5,633,169 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocrystalline | A protocrystalline phase is a distinct phase occurring during crystal growth, which evolves into a microcrystalline form. The term is typically associated with silicon films in optical applications such as solar cells.
Applications
Silicon solar cells
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is a popular solar cell material owing to its low cost and ease of production. Owing to its disordered structure (Urbach tail), its absorption extends to the energies below the band gap, resulting in a wide-range spectral response; however, it has a relatively low solar cell efficiency. Protocrystalline Si (pc-Si:H) also has a relatively low absorption near the band gap, owing to its more ordered crystalline structure. Thus, protocrystalline and amorphous silicon can be combined in a tandem solar cell, where the top thin layer of a-Si:H absorbs short-wavelength light whereas the underlying protocrystalline silicon layer absorbs the longer wavelengths
See also
Amorphous silicon
Crystallite
Multijunction
Polycarbonate (PC)
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
References
External links
Crystallography
Thin-film cells | Protocrystalline | Physics,Chemistry,Materials_science,Mathematics,Engineering | 242 |
5,064,160 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%20persulfate | Sodium persulfate is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2S2O8. It is the sodium salt of peroxydisulfuric acid, H2S2O8, an oxidizing agent. It is a white solid that dissolves in water. It is almost non-hygroscopic and has good shelf-life.
Production
The salt is prepared by the electrolytic oxidation of sodium bisulfate:
2 NaHSO4 -> Na2S2O8 + H2
Oxidation is conducted at a platinum anode. In this way about 165,000 tons were produced in 2005.
The standard redox potential of sodium persulfate into hydrogen sulfate is 2.1 V, which is higher than that of hydrogen peroxide (1.8 V) but lower than ozone (2.2 V). The sulfate radical formed in situ has a standard electrode potential of 2.7 V.
However, there are a few drawbacks in utilizing platinum anodes to produce the salts; the manufacturing process is inefficient due to oxygen evolution and the product could contain contaminants coming from platinum corrosion (mainly due to extremely oxidizing nature of the sulfate radical). Thus, boron-doped diamond electrodes have been proposed as alternatives to the conventional platinum electrodes.
Structure
The sodium and potassium salts adopt very similar structures in the solid state, according to X-ray crystallography. In the sodium salt, the O-O distance is 1.476Å. The sulfate groups are tetrahedral, with three short S-O distances near 1.44 and one long S-O bond at 1.64Å.
Applications
It is mainly used as a radical initiator for emulsion polymerization reactions for styrene based polymers such as Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Also applicable for accelerated curing of low formaldehyde adhesives.
Other uses
It is a bleach, both standalone (particularly in hair cosmetics) and as a detergent component. It is a replacement for ammonium persulfate in etching mixtures for zinc and printed circuit boards, and is used for pickling of copper and some other metals.
It is also used as a soil conditioner and for soil and groundwater remediation and in manufacture of dyestuffs, modification of starch, bleach activator, desizing agent for oxidative desizing, etc.
Organic chemistry
Sodium persulfate is a specialized oxidizing agent in chemistry, classically in the Elbs persulfate oxidation and the Boyland–Sims oxidation reactions. It is also used in radical reactions; for example in a synthesis of diapocynin from apocynin where iron(II) sulfate is the radical initiator.
Safety
The salt is an oxidizer and forms combustible mixtures with organic materials such as paper.
References
Persulfates
Sodium compounds
Oxidizing agents | Sodium persulfate | Chemistry | 616 |
89,834 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl%20Koch%20%28hacker%29 | Karl Werner Lothar Koch (July 22, 1965 – c. May 23, 1989) was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.
Biography
Koch was born in Hanover. His mother died of cancer in 1976; his father had alcohol problems and in August 1984 also died of cancer.
Koch was interested in astronomy as a teenager and was also involved in the state student's council. In 1979 Karl's father gave him the 1975 book, Illuminatus! – The Golden Apple by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, which had a strong influence to him. From his income as a member of the state students' council, he bought his first computer in 1982 and named it "FUCKUP" ("First Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer") after The Illuminatus! Trilogy. In 1985 Koch and some other hackers founded the Computer-Stammtisch in a pub of the Hanover-Oststadt, which developed later into the Chaos Computer Club Hanover. During this time Koch began to use hard drugs. In February 1987 Koch broke off a vacation in Spain, because of this, and had himself admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Aachen for rehab treatments, where he stayed for three months.
Hacking
He worked with the hackers known as DOB (Dirk-Otto Brezinski), Pengo (Hans Heinrich Hübner), and Urmel (Markus Hess), and was involved in selling hacked information from United States military computers to the KGB. Clifford Stoll's book The Cuckoo's Egg gives a first-person account of the hunt and eventual identification and arrest of Hess in March 1989. Pengo and Koch subsequently came forward and confessed to the authorities under the espionage amnesty, which protected them from being prosecuted.
Death
In May 1989 Koch left his workplace in his car to go for lunch; when he had not returned by late afternoon, his employer reported him as a missing person.
German police were alerted to a long abandoned car in a forest near Celle on June 1, 1989. The remains of Koch—at this point just bones—were discovered close by with a patch of scorched and burnt ground surrounding them and with his shoes missing. The scorched earth itself was controlled in a small circle around the corpse even though it had not rained in some time and the grass was perfectly dry.
Despite his death being officially ruled a suicide, His death fueled conspiracy theories, with speculation ranging from suicide due to psychological struggles and drug addiction to retaliation by intelligence agencies. His death remains controversial, symbolizing both the dangers of hacking and the psychological toll of his lifestyle. Koch's story inspired books, films, and enduring myths about hackers and conspiracies.
With no suicide note having ever been found.
Karl Koch in media
Books
Movies
A German movie about his life, entitled 23, was released in 1998. While the film was critically acclaimed, it has been harshly criticized as exploitative by real-life witnesses. A corrective to the film's take is the documentation written by his friends.
In 1990, a documentary was released titled The KGB, The Computer and Me.
Music
Koch was memorialized by Clock DVA at the opening of their music video for "The Hacker" and in the liner notes for "The Hacker" on the album Buried Dreams (1989).
See also
Boris Floricic a.k.a. Tron, a computer hacker who allegedly suffered a similar fate
References
External links
Story of a Grey Hacker
WikiLeaks and Karl Werner Lothar Koch
1965 births
1989 suicides
German spies for the Soviet Union
People from Hanover
Suicides by self-immolation
Hackers
1989 deaths
Suicides in West Germany | Karl Koch (hacker) | Technology | 772 |
12,202,029 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons%E2%80%93Hawking%20effect | In the theory of general relativity, the Gibbons–Hawking effect is the statement that a temperature can be associated to each solution of the Einstein field equations that contains a causal horizon. It is named after Gary Gibbons and Stephen Hawking.
The term "causal horizon" does not necessarily refer to event horizons only, but could also stand for the horizon of the visible universe, for instance.
For example, Schwarzschild spacetime contains an event horizon and so can be associated a temperature. In the case of Schwarzschild spacetime this is the temperature of a black hole of mass , satisfying (see also Hawking radiation).
A second example is de Sitter space which contains an event horizon. In this case the temperature is proportional to the Hubble parameter , i.e. .
See also
Hawking radiation
Gibbons–Hawking space
References
General relativity
Stephen Hawking | Gibbons–Hawking effect | Physics | 178 |
55,635,746 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia%20%28robot%29 | Sophia is a female social humanoid robot developed in 2016 by the Hong Kong–based company Hanson Robotics. Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016, and made her first public appearance in mid-March 2016 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, United States. Sophia was marketed as a "social robot" who can mimic social behavior and induce feelings of love in humans.
Sophia has been covered by media around the globe, and has participated in many high-profile interviews. In October 2017, Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country. In November 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion, and is the first non-human to be given a United Nations title.
According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source. A paper describing one of Sophia's open-source subsystems, called "Open Arms", was submitted to 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022).
History
Sophia was first activated on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2016. The robot, modeled after the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, Audrey Hepburn, and its inventor's wife, Amanda Hanson, is known for its human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants. Sophia imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and to make simple conversation on predefined topics (e.g. the weather).
Hanson has said that he designed Sophia to be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes, to help crowds at large events or parks, or to serve in customer service, therapy, and educational applications and that he hopes that the robot can ultimately interact with other humans sufficiently to gain social skills.
On October 11, 2017, Sophia was introduced to the United Nations with a brief conversation with the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina J. Mohammed.
On October 25, when Sophia was scheduled to appear at the Future Investment Summit in Riyadh, the Saudi Ministry for Culture and Information issued a press release on the Saudi Center for International Communication website, announcing that Saudi Arabia was granting citizenship to Sophia. At the Summit, the host interviewing Sophia announced that "We just learned, Sophia – I hope you are listening to me – you have been awarded what is going to be the first Saudi citizenship for a robot", making Sophia the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country. In an interview, Hanson stated that he had been taken by surprise by this turn of events.
On November 21, 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion for Asia and the Pacific. The announcement was made at the Responsible Business Forum in Singapore, an event hosted by the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific and Global Initiatives. On stage, she was assigned her first task by UNDP Asia Pacific Chief of Policy and Program, Jaco Cilliers.
Social media users have used Sophia's citizenship to criticize Saudi Arabia's human rights record. In December 2017, Sophia's creator David Hanson said in an interview that Sophia would use her citizenship to advocate for women's rights in her new country of citizenship.
In 2019, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits. The algorithms used to enable Sophia to draw were developed and adapted by Patrick Tresset. In 2021, a self-portrait created by Sophia sold for nearly $700,000 at auction.
Sophia has at least nine robot humanoid "siblings" who were also created by Hanson Robotics. Fellow Hanson robots are Alice, Albert HUBO, BINA48, Han, Jules, Professor Einstein, Philip K. Dick Android, Zeno, and Joey Chaos. In 2019 to 2020, Hanson released "Little Sophia" as a companion that could teach children how to code, including support for Python, Blockly, and Raspberry Pi.
Software
Sophia's intelligence software is designed by Hanson Robotics. According to founder David Hanson, Sophia's source code is about 70% open source. A computer vision algorithm processes input from cameras within Sophia's eyes, giving Sophia visual information on its surroundings. It can follow faces, sustain eye contact, and recognize individuals. It can process speech and have conversations using a natural language subsystem.
As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning. OpenCog Prime, primarily the work of Hanson Robotics' former chief scientist Ben Goertzel, is an architecture for robot and virtual embodied cognition that defines a set of interacting components designed to give rise to human-equivalent artificial general intelligence (AGI) as an emergent phenomenon of the whole system.
Goertzel has described the AI methods that Sophia uses, which include face tracking and emotion recognition, with robotic movements generated by deep neural networks. CNBC has commented on Sophia's "lifelike" skin and its ability to emulate more than 60 facial expressions. Sophia's dialogue is generated via a decision tree, and is uniquely integrated with these outputs. Its speech synthesis ability is provided by CereProc's text-to-speech engine, which also allows it to sing.
Sophia is conceptually similar to the computer program ELIZA, which was one of the first attempts at simulating a human conversation. The software has been programmed to give pre-written responses to specific questions or phrases, like a chatbot. These responses are used to create the illusion that the robot is able to understand conversation, including stock answers to questions like "Is the door open or shut?" Sophia's AI program analyses conversations and extracts data that allows it to improve responses in the future.
In 2017 Hanson Robotics announced plans to open Sophia to a cloud environment using a decentralized blockchain marketplace. Around January 2018, Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk. In 2019, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits.
A paper describing of one of Sophia's open-source subsystems, called "Open Arms", was submitted to 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022).
Appearances and interviews
Sophia has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, and outlets like CNBC, Forbes, Mashable, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Sophia was featured in AUDI's annual report and was featured on the cover of the December 2016 issue of ELLE Brasil. R. Eric Thomas later lampooned Sophia on Elle.com.
Sophia has been interviewed in the same manner as a human, striking up conversations with hosts. Some replies have been nonsensical, while others have impressed interviewers such as 60 Minutess Charlie Rose.
In an October 2017 interview for CNBC, when the interviewer expressed concerns about robot behavior, Sophia joked that he had "been reading too much Elon Musk. And watching too many Hollywood movies". Musk tweeted that Sophia should watch The Godfather and asked "what's the worst that could happen?"
Business Insider's chief UK editor Jim Edwards interviewed Sophia, and while the answers were "not altogether terrible", he predicted that Sophia was a step towards "conversational artificial intelligence". At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, a BBC News reporter described talking with Sophia as "a slightly awkward experience".
In May 2018, photographer Giulio Di Sturco did a photo shoot of Sophia which appeared in National Geographic. Wired reported on the shoot.
In 2024, Sophia gave the commencement address at D'Youville University in Buffalo, New York. The address took the form of an interview with the president of the Student Government Association.
Citizenship quandary
Saudi Arabia's move of granting citizenship to Sophia immediately raised questions, as commentators wondered if this implied that Sophia could vote or marry, or whether a deliberate system shutdown could be considered murder.
Some sources characterized the move as a publicity stunt on the part of the Saudi government to promote the conference. Graduate student Tyler L. Jaynes writes that there was a "lack of universal acceptance of Sophia the Robot's citizenship and its portrayal and acceptance as a public relations stunt".
Simon Nease, writing in the Penn Political Review, suggests that it was a competitive move on the part of Saudi Arabia to attract AI and robotics companies to the country, noting that "Japan has also made preliminary provisions for AI obtaining citizenship". The British Council has published an article, "Should robots be citizens?", which notes that Sophia was issued a passport and goes on to address the "legal quandary" of robot citizenship.
Criticism
According to Quartz, experts who have reviewed the robot's partially open-source code state that Sophia is best categorized as a chatbot with a face.
According to The Verge, Hanson has exaggerated Sophia's capacity for consciousness, for example by having said that Sophia is "basically alive", which Verge writer James Vincent described as "grossly misleading".
In January 2018, Facebook's director of artificial intelligence, Yann LeCun, tweeted that Sophia was "complete bullshit" and slammed the media for giving coverage to "Potemkin AI". In response, Ben Goertzel, the former chief scientist for the company that made Sophia, stated he had never suggested that Sophia was close to human-level intelligence.
Goertzel has also acknowledged that it is "not ideal" that some think of Sophia as having human-equivalent intelligence, but argues Sophia's presentation conveys something unique to audiences, saying "If I show them a beautiful smiling robot face, then they get the feeling that AGI may indeed be nearby and viable" and "None of this is what I would call AGI, but nor is it simple to get working. And it is absolutely cutting-edge in terms of dynamic integration of perception, action, and dialogue".
In popular culture
Sophia has appeared in videos and music videos, including The White King, and as the lead female character in pop singer Leehom Wang's music video A.I.
A Sophia lookalike was portrayed by drag queen Gigi Goode in the "Snatch Game" episode of the twelfth season of RuPaul's Drag Race (2020). Goode won the episode with her character "Maria the Robot", based heavily on Sophia and named after a robot featured in the Fritz Lang film Metropolis.
In 2022, Sophia collaborated with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto. For this project, he created digital portraits of Sophia and her creators, which were then processed by Sophia's neural network to produce a unique output that evolved from Bonaceto's original artworks. Bonaceto then created a series of NFTs as video loops displaying the evolution of the work, starting with Andrea drawings, morphing into the robot interpretation, and then transitioning back to Andrea's work. The cornerstone piece of the release "Sophia Instantiation" was auctioned on NFT platform Nifty Gateway for $688,888.
In 2023, Sophia was featured at the entrance of the BOSS Techtopia Fashion Show and took photos with many of the shows runway models and celebrity guests.
See also
ELIZA effect
Ethics of artificial intelligence
Stochastic parrot
Stranger in a Strange Land
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
Sophia's open-source code on GitHub
2016 robots
Android (robot)
Free and open-source software
Humanoid robots
Robots of China
Robots of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabian nationality law
Saudi Arabian Internet celebrities
Science and technology in Hong Kong
Social robots | Sophia (robot) | Technology,Engineering | 2,374 |
65,443,966 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Soviet%20calculators | This is a list of calculators created and produced in Soviet Union.
Mechanical computers
Odhner Arithmometer
VK-1
Electromechanical computers
Bystritsa
Bystritsa-2
Bystritsa-3
SDV-107
VK-2
VK-3
VMM-2
VMP-2
Relay calculators
Vilnyus
Vyatka
Electrical calculators
Contact-N, Kleyster-N, Spika
EDVM
Orbita
Rasa
Ros
Vega
"Elka" series, Bulgaria
Source:
Elka 22
Elka 43
Elka 50M
Elka 55
Soemtron 220
"Iskra" series
Iskra 108/108D
Iskra 11
Iskra 110
Iskra 1103
Iskra 111/111I/111M/111T
Iskra 112/112L
Iskra 1121
Iskra 1122
Iskra 114
Iskra 12
Iskra 121
Iskra 122/122-1
Iskra 123
Iskra 124
Iskra 125
Iskra 12M
Iskra 13
Iskra 210
Iskra 22
Iskra 2210
Iskra 2240/2240M
"Elektronika" series
Elektronika 24-71
Elektronika 4-71/4-71B/4-71C
Elektronika 4-73B
Elektronika 68
Elektronika C2
Elektronika EKVM D3
Elektronika EKVM-P
Elektronika Epos-73A
Elektronika T3-16
Elektronika-70
"Elektronika B3" series
"B" in "B3" stands for "bytovaya" (Russian: бытовая), which means "domestic".
Elektronika B3-01
Elektronika B3-02
Elektronika B3-04
Elektronika B3-05/B3-05M
Elektronika B3-08
Elektronika B3-09/B3-09M
Elektronika B3-10
Elektronika B3-11
Elektronika B3-14/B3-14K
Elektronika B3-14M
Elektronika B3-18/B3-18A/B3-18M
Elektronika B3-19/B3-19M
Elektronika B3-21
Elektronika B3-23/B3-23A
Elektronika B3-24/B3-24G
Elektronika B3-25/B3-25A
Elektronika B3-26/B3-26A
Elektronika B3-30
Elektronika B3-32
Elektronika B3-34
Elektronika B3-35
Elektronika B3-36
Elektronika B3-37
Elektronika B3-38
Elektronika B3-39
Elektronika B3-54
"Elektronika C3" series
C in "C3" stands for Svetlana (company) (Russian: Светлана).
Elektronika С3-07
Elektronika С3-15
Elektronika С3-22
Elektronika С3-27/C3-27A
Elektronika С3-33
"Elektronika MK" series
"MK" stands for "microcalculator" (Russian: микрокалькулятор).
Elektronika MK-103
Elektronika MK-104
Elektronika MK-106
Elektronika MK-107
Elektronika MK-1103
Elektronika MK-1104
Elektronika MK-15
Elektronika MK-18M
Elektronika MK-22
Elektronika MK-23/MK-23A
Elektronika MK-33
Elektronika MK-35
Elektronika MK-36
Elektronika MK-37/MK-37A/MK-37B
Elektronika MK-38
Elektronika MK-40
Elektronika MK-41
Elektronika MK-42
Elektronika MK-44
Elektronika MK-45
Elektronika MK-46
Elektronika MK-47
Elektronika MK-51
Elektronika MK-52
Elektronika MK-53
Elektronika MK-54
Elektronika MK-56
Elektronika MK-57/MK-57A/MK-57B/MK-57C
Elektronika MK-59
Elektronika MK-60/MK-60M
Elektronika MK-61
Elektronika MK-62
Elektronika MK-64
Elektronika MK-66
Elektronika MK-68/68A
Elektronika MK-69
Elektronika MK-71
Elektronika MK-77
Elektronika MK-85/MK-85M/MK-85S
Elektronika MK-87
Elektronika MK-90
Elektronika MK-91
Elektronika MK-92
Elektronika MK-93
Elektronika MK-94/MK-94A
Elektronika MK-95
Elektronika MK-98
Elektronika MK-PPV
Elektronika MKSH-2/MKSH-2M
Elektronika MKU-1
Calculators for kids
Detskaya Kassa
Malysh
See also
Calculator
Science and technology in the Soviet Union
References
Calculators
Science and technology in the Soviet Union | List of Soviet calculators | Mathematics | 1,201 |
16,846,471 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZNF664 | Zinc finger protein 664 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ZNF664 gene.
References
Further reading | ZNF664 | Chemistry | 27 |
1,497,356 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCF%20Employees%27%20Union | MCF Employees' Union, a trade union at the Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers, in Karnataka, India. MCFEU is affiliated to Hind Mazdoor Sabha.
Trade unions in India
Hind Mazdoor Sabha-affiliated unions
Trade unions at the Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers
Chemical industry trade unions
Organizations with year of establishment missing | MCF Employees' Union | Chemistry | 73 |
15,170,825 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray%20Brassier | Raymond Brassier (; born December 22, 1965) is a British philosopher. He is a member of the philosophy faculty at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, known for his work in philosophical realism. He was formerly Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, England.
Brassier is the author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction and the translator of Alain Badiou's Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism and Theoretical Writings and Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. He first attained prominence as a leading authority on the works of François Laruelle.
More recently Brassier has engaged with Marxism and the work of the German-American political theorist Paul Mattick. In August 2024 it was announced that Brassier would be joining Kyung Hee University as a visiting professor in the Department of British & American Language and Culture, and in 2025 teach a masters course on Marxism and literature with the British theorist and filmmaker Jason Barker.
Brassier is of mixed French-Scottish ancestry.
Education
He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North London in 1995 and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Warwick in 1997 and 2001 respectively.
Philosophical work
Along with Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, and Iain Hamilton Grant, Brassier is one of the foremost philosophers of contemporary speculative realism interested in providing a robust defence of philosophical realism in the wake of the challenges posed to it by post-Kantian critical idealism, phenomenology, post-modernism, deconstruction, or, more broadly speaking, what they refer to as "correlationism". Brassier is generally credited with coining the term speculative realism, though Meillassoux had earlier used the phrase speculative materialism () to refer to his own position.
Brassier himself, however, does not identify with the speculative realist movement, and, further, disputes that there even is such a movement, stating:
Brassier is strongly critical of much of contemporary philosophy for what he regards as its attempt "to stave off the 'threat' of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning – characterized as the defining feature of human existence – from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment". According to Brassier, this tendency is exemplified above all by philosophers strongly influenced by Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Unlike philosophers such as John McDowell, who would press philosophy into service in an attempt to bring about a "re-enchantment of the world", Brassier's work aims to "push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion".
According to Brassier, "the disenchantment of the world understood as a consequence of the process whereby the Enlightenment shattered the 'great chain of being' and defaced the 'book of the world' is a necessary consequence of the coruscating potency of reason, and hence an invigorating vector of intellectual discovery, rather than a calamitous diminishment". "Philosophy", exhorts Brassier, "would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity."
Brassier's work attempts to fuse elements of post-war French philosophy with ideas arising from the (largely Anglo-American) traditions of philosophical naturalism, cognitive science, and neurophilosophy. Thus, along with French philosophers such as François Laruelle, Alain Badiou, and Quentin Meillassoux, he is also heavily influenced by the likes of Paul Churchland, Thomas Metzinger and Stephen Jay Gould. He also draws heavily, albeit often negatively, on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger.
Brassier's work has often been associated with contemporary philosophies of nihilism and pessimism. In an interview True Detective creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto gave he cited Brassier's Nihil Unbound as an influence on the TV series, along with Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Jim Crawford's Confessions of an Antinatalist, Eugene Thacker's In The Dust of This Planet, and David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been.
Bibliography
Books
Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Articles
"Wandering Abstraction." Mute (2014)
"Transcendental Logic and True Representings." Glass-bead (2016)
"Dialectics Between Suspicion and Trust." Stasis (2017)
References
External links
Faculty webpage at the American University of Beirut
Review of Nihil Unbound in New Humanist
Axiomatic Heresy: The Non-Philosophy of Francois Laruelle Radical Philosophy 121, Sep/Oct 2003. p. 25
Webpage for Collapse journal featuring contributions by Ray Brassier and other "speculative realists"
Interview with Ray Brassier
Ray Brassier interviewed by Marcin Rychter "KRONOS"
Catherine Malabou's talk It Does Not Have to Be Like This (On Meillassoux and Contingency) from the Forum for European Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, September 2012 (MP3)
Contemporary Readings of Hegel at The New Centre for Research & Practice (YouTube)
1965 births
Living people
21st-century British philosophers
Academic staff of the American University of Beirut
Continental philosophers
French–English translators
Materialists
British metaphysicians
Philosophers of nihilism
Philosophical realism
Translators of philosophy
21st-century British translators
Noise musicians
Industrial musicians
Heidegger scholars
Nihilists
Postmodernists | Ray Brassier | Physics | 1,211 |
78,697,133 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC%201166 | NGC 1166 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Eridanus. It is situated approximately 53 million light-years away from Earth and was discovered by the British astronomer John Herschel on November 17, 1834.
Structure and characteristics
NGC 1166 is classified as an Sb-type barred spiral galaxy. This means the galaxy has a well-defined bar at its center, with spiral arms extending outward. It is a relatively medium-sized galaxy, spanning approximately 2.0 x 1.8 arcminutes in the sky. The galaxy exhibits active star formation in its spiral arms, where new stars are being created from interstellar gas and dust.
NGC 1166 also has a high surface brightness, making it an interesting target for both optical and infrared studies.
Discovery
NGC 1166 was discovered by the renowned astronomer John Herschel during his survey of the southern skies in 1834. Herschel's extensive cataloging of nebulae and galaxies led to the inclusion of NGC 1166 in the New General Catalogue (NGC), where it is listed among other deep-sky objects.
Location and distance
NGC 1166 is located in the constellation Eridanus, a large and prominent southern constellation. The galaxy is about 53 million light-years away from Earth, with a radial velocity of approximately 3530 km/s, indicating its motion relative to the Milky Way.
Importance and research
NGC 1166 is a useful object of study for astronomers researching the formation and evolution of barred spiral galaxies. Its relatively close proximity allows for detailed observation, and its active star-forming regions provide insights into the processes that drive galaxy evolution.
Supernovae
Two supernovae have been observed in NGC 1166:
SN2018htf (typeII, mag. 17.9) was discovered by the Puckett Observatory Supernovae Search (POSS) on 3 November 2018.
SN2021zby (typeIIb, mag. 18.162) was discovered by ATLAS on 17 September 2021.
See also
List of NGC objects
Barred spiral galaxy
John Herschel
References
External links
NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) - NGC 1166
SIMBAD Astronomical Database - NGC 1166
Spiral galaxies
NGC objects
Eridanus (constellation) | NGC 1166 | Astronomy | 449 |
16,838,918 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapsing%20manifold | In Riemannian geometry, a collapsing or collapsed manifold is an n-dimensional manifold M that admits a sequence of Riemannian metrics gi, such that as i goes to infinity the manifold is close to a k-dimensional space, where k < n, in the Gromov–Hausdorff distance sense. Generally there are some restrictions on the sectional curvatures of (M, gi). The simplest example is a flat manifold, whose metric can be rescaled by 1/i, so that the manifold is close to a point, but its curvature remains 0 for all i.
Examples
Generally speaking there are two types of collapsing:
(1) The first type is a collapse while keeping the curvature uniformly bounded, say .
Let be a sequence of dimensional Riemannian manifolds, where denotes the sectional curvature of the ith manifold. There is a theorem proved by Jeff Cheeger, Kenji Fukaya and Mikhail Gromov, which states that: There exists a constant such that if and , then admits an N-structure, with denoting the injectivity radius of the manifold M. Roughly speaking the N-structure is a locally action of a nilmanifold, which is a generalization of an F-structure, introduced by Cheeger and Gromov. This theorem generalized previous theorems of Cheeger-Gromov and Fukaya where they only deal with the torus action and bounded diameter cases respectively.
(2) The second type is the collapsing while keeping only the lower bound of curvature, say .
This is closely related to the so-called almost nonnegatively curved manifold case which generalizes non-negatively curved manifolds as well as almost flat manifolds. A manifold is said to be almost nonnegatively curved if it admits a sequence of metrics , such that and . The role that an almost nonnegatively curved manifold plays in this collapsing case when curvature is bounded below is the same as an almost flat manifold plays in the curvature bounded case.
When curvature is bounded only from below, the limit space called is an Alexandrov space. Yamaguchi proved that on the regular part of the limit space, there is a locally trivial fibration form to when is sufficiently large, the fiber is an almost nonnegatively curved manifold. Here the regular means the -strainer radius is uniformly bounded from below by a positive number, or roughly speaking, the space locally closed to the Euclidean space.
What happens at a singular point of ? There is no answer to this question in general. But on dimension 3, Shioya and Yamaguchi give a full classification of this type collapsed manifold. They proved that there exists a and such that if a 3-dimensional manifold satisfies then one of the following is true: (i) M is a graph manifold or (ii) has diameter less than and has finite fundamental group.
References
Differential geometry
Manifolds
Riemannian geometry | Collapsing manifold | Mathematics | 597 |
19,469,852 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane%20%28mathematics%29 | In mathematics, a plane is a two-dimensional space or flat surface that extends indefinitely.
A plane is the two-dimensional analogue of a point (zero dimensions), a line (one dimension) and three-dimensional space. When working exclusively in two-dimensional Euclidean space, the definite article is used, so the Euclidean plane refers to the whole space.
Several notions of a plane may be defined. The Euclidean plane follows Euclidean geometry, and in particular the parallel postulate. A projective plane may be constructed by adding "points at infinity" where two otherwise parallel lines would intersect, so that every pair of lines intersects in exactly one point. The elliptic plane may be further defined by adding a metric to the real projective plane. One may also conceive of a hyperbolic plane, which obeys hyperbolic geometry and has a negative curvature.
Abstractly, one may forget all structure except the topology, producing the topological plane, which is homeomorphic to an open disk. Viewing the plane as an affine space produces the affine plane, which lacks a notion of distance but preserves the notion of collinearity. Conversely, in adding more structure, one may view the plane as a 1-dimensional complex manifold, called the complex line.
Many fundamental tasks in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, graph theory, and graphing are performed in a two-dimensional or planar space.
Euclidean plane
Embedding in three-dimensional space
Elliptic plane
Projective plane
Further generalizations
In addition to its familiar geometric structure, with isomorphisms that are isometries with respect to the usual inner product, the plane may be viewed at various other levels of abstraction. Each level of abstraction corresponds to a specific category.
At one extreme, all geometrical and metric concepts may be dropped to leave the topological plane, which may be thought of as an idealized homotopically trivial infinite rubber sheet, which retains a notion of proximity, but has no distances. The topological plane has a concept of a linear path, but no concept of a straight line. The topological plane, or its equivalent the open disc, is the basic topological neighborhood used to construct surfaces (or 2-manifolds) classified in low-dimensional topology. Isomorphisms of the topological plane are all continuous bijections. The topological plane is the natural context for the branch of graph theory that deals with planar graphs, and results such as the four color theorem.
The plane may also be viewed as an affine space, whose isomorphisms are combinations of translations and non-singular linear maps. From this viewpoint there are no distances, but collinearity and ratios of distances on any line are preserved.
Differential geometry views a plane as a 2-dimensional real manifold, a topological plane which is provided with a differential structure. Again in this case, there is no notion of distance, but there is now a concept of smoothness of maps, for example a differentiable or smooth path (depending on the type of differential structure applied). The isomorphisms in this case are bijections with the chosen degree of differentiability.
In the opposite direction of abstraction, we may apply a compatible field structure to the geometric plane, giving rise to the complex plane and the major area of complex analysis. The complex field has only two isomorphisms that leave the real line fixed, the identity and conjugation.
In the same way as in the real case, the plane may also be viewed as the simplest, one-dimensional (in terms of complex dimension, over the complex numbers) complex manifold, sometimes called the complex line. However, this viewpoint contrasts sharply with the case of the plane as a 2-dimensional real manifold. The isomorphisms are all conformal bijections of the complex plane, but the only possibilities are maps that correspond to the composition of a multiplication by a complex number and a translation.
In addition, the Euclidean geometry (which has zero curvature everywhere) is not the only geometry that the plane may have. The plane may be given a spherical geometry by using the stereographic projection. This can be thought of as placing a sphere tangent to the plane (just like a ball on the floor), removing the top point, and projecting the sphere onto the plane from this point. This is one of the projections that may be used in making a flat map of part of the Earth's surface. The resulting geometry has constant positive curvature.
Alternatively, the plane can also be given a metric which gives it constant negative curvature giving the hyperbolic plane. The latter possibility finds an application in the theory of special relativity in the simplified case where there are two spatial dimensions and one time dimension. (The hyperbolic plane is a timelike hypersurface in three-dimensional Minkowski space.)
Topological and differential geometric notions
The one-point compactification of the plane is homeomorphic to a sphere (see stereographic projection); the open disk is homeomorphic to a sphere with the "north pole" missing; adding that point completes the (compact) sphere. The result of this compactification is a manifold referred to as the Riemann sphere or the complex projective line. The projection from the Euclidean plane to a sphere without a point is a diffeomorphism and even a conformal map.
The plane itself is homeomorphic (and diffeomorphic) to an open disk. For the hyperbolic plane such diffeomorphism is conformal, but for the Euclidean plane it is not.
See also
Affine plane
Half-plane
Hyperbolic geometry
References
Geometry
Surfaces | Plane (mathematics) | Mathematics | 1,122 |
40,579 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill | A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they are kept moist. The microscopic structure of a gill presents a large surface area to the external environment. Branchia (: branchiae) is the zoologists' name for gills (from Ancient Greek ).
With the exception of some aquatic insects, the filaments and lamellae (folds) contain blood or coelomic fluid, from which gases are exchanged through the thin walls. The blood carries oxygen to other parts of the body. Carbon dioxide passes from the blood through the thin gill tissue into the water. Gills or gill-like organs, located in different parts of the body, are found in various groups of aquatic animals, including mollusks, crustaceans, insects, fish, and amphibians. Semiterrestrial marine animals such as crabs and mudskippers have gill chambers in which they store water, enabling them to use the dissolved oxygen when they are on land.
History
Galen observed that fish had multitudes of openings (foramina), big enough to admit gases, but too fine to give passage to water. Pliny the Elder held that fish respired by their gills, but observed that Aristotle was of another opinion. The word branchia comes from the Greek , "gills", plural of (in singular, meaning a fin).
Function
Many microscopic aquatic animals, and some larger but inactive ones, can absorb sufficient oxygen through the entire surface of their bodies, and so can respire adequately without gills. However, more complex or more active aquatic organisms usually require a gill or gills. Many invertebrates, and even amphibians, use both the body surface and gills for gaseous exchange.
Gills usually consist of thin filaments of tissue, lamellae (plates), branches, or slender, tufted processes that have a highly folded surface to increase surface area. The delicate nature of the gills is possible because the surrounding water provides support. The blood or other body fluid must be in intimate contact with the respiratory surface for ease of diffusion.
A high surface area is crucial to the gas exchange of aquatic organisms, as water contains only a small fraction of the dissolved oxygen than air does, and it diffuses more slowly. A cubic meter of air contains about 275 grams of oxygen at STP. Fresh water hold less than 1/25th the oxygen content of air, the dissolved oxygen content being approximately 8 cm3/L compared to that of air which is 210 cm3/L. Water is 777 times more dense than air and is 100 times more viscous. Oxygen has a diffusion rate in air 10,000 times greater than in water. The use of sac-like lungs to remove oxygen from water would not be efficient enough to sustain life. Rather than using lungs, "[g]aseous exchange takes place across the surface of highly vascularised gills over which a one-way current of water is kept flowing by a specialised pumping mechanism. The density of the water prevents the gills from collapsing and lying on top of each other; [such collapse] happens when a fish is taken out of water."
Usually water is moved across the gills in one direction by the current, by the motion of the animal through the water, by the beating of cilia or other appendages, or by means of a pumping mechanism. In fish and some molluscs, the efficiency of the gills is greatly enhanced by a countercurrent exchange mechanism in which the water passes over the gills in the opposite direction to the flow of blood through them. This mechanism is very efficient and as much as 90% of the dissolved oxygen in the water may be recovered.
Vertebrates
The gills of vertebrates typically develop in the walls of the pharynx, along a series of gill slits opening to the exterior. Most species employ a countercurrent exchange system to enhance the diffusion of substances in and out of the gill, with blood and water flowing in opposite directions to each other. The gills are composed of comb-like filaments, the gill lamellae, which help increase their surface area for oxygen exchange.
When a fish breathes, it draws in a mouthful of water at regular intervals. Then it draws the sides of its throat together, forcing the water through the gill openings, so it passes over the gills to the outside. Fish gill slits may be the evolutionary ancestors of the thymus glands, parathyroid glands, as well as many other structures derived from the embryonic branchial pouches.
Fish
The gills of fish form a number of slits connecting the pharynx to the outside of the animal on either side of the fish behind the head. Originally there were many slits, but during evolution, the number reduced, and modern fish mostly have five pairs, and never more than eight.
Cartilaginous fish
Sharks and rays typically have five pairs of gill slits that open directly to the outside of the body, though some more primitive sharks have six pairs with the Broadnose sevengill shark being the only cartilaginous fish exceeding this number. Adjacent slits are separated by a cartilaginous gill arch from which projects a cartilaginous gill ray. This gill ray is the support for the sheet-like interbranchial septum, which the individual lamellae of the gills lie on either side of. The base of the arch may also support gill rakers, projections into the pharyngeal cavity that help to prevent large pieces of debris from damaging the delicate gills.
A smaller opening, the spiracle, lies in the back of the first gill slit. This bears a small pseudobranch that resembles a gill in structure, but only receives blood already oxygenated by the true gills. The spiracle is thought to be homologous to the ear opening in higher vertebrates.
Most sharks rely on ram ventilation, forcing water into the mouth and over the gills by rapidly swimming forward. In slow-moving or bottom-dwelling species, especially among skates and rays, the spiracle may be enlarged, and the fish breathes by sucking water through this opening, instead of through the mouth.
Chimaeras differ from other cartilagenous fish, having lost both the spiracle and the fifth gill slit. The remaining slits are covered by an operculum, developed from the septum of the gill arch in front of the first gill.
Bony fish
In bony fish, the gills lie in a branchial chamber covered by a bony operculum. The great majority of bony fish species have five pairs of gills, although a few have lost some over the course of evolution. The operculum can be important in adjusting the pressure of water inside of the pharynx to allow proper ventilation of the gills, so bony fish do not have to rely on ram ventilation (and hence near constant motion) to breathe. Valves inside the mouth keep the water from escaping.
The gill arches of bony fish typically have no septum, so the gills alone project from the arch, supported by individual gill rays. Some species retain gill rakers. Though all but the most primitive bony fish lack spiracles, the pseudobranch associated with them often remains, being located at the base of the operculum. This is, however, often greatly reduced, consisting of a small mass of cells without any remaining gill-like structure.
Marine teleosts also use their gills to excrete osmolytes (e.g. Na⁺, Cl−). The gills' large surface area tends to create a problem for fish that seek to regulate the osmolarity of their internal fluids. Seawater contains more osmolytes than the fish's internal fluids, so marine fishes naturally lose water through their gills via osmosis. To regain the water, marine fishes drink large amounts of sea water while simultaneously expending energy to excrete salt through the Na+/K+-ATPase ionocytes (formerly known as mitochondrion-rich cells and chloride cells). Conversely, fresh water contains less osmolytes than the fish's internal fluids. Therefore, freshwater fishes must utilize their gill ionocytes to attain ions from their environment to maintain optimal blood osmolarity.
Lampreys and hagfish do not have gill slits as such. Instead, the gills are contained in spherical pouches, with a circular opening to the outside. Like the gill slits of higher fish, each pouch contains two gills. In some cases, the openings may be fused together, effectively forming an operculum. Lampreys have seven pairs of pouches, while hagfishes may have six to fourteen, depending on the species. In the hagfish, the pouches connect with the pharynx internally and a separate tube which has no respiratory tissue (the pharyngocutaneous duct) develops beneath the pharynx proper, expelling ingested debris by closing a valve at its anterior end. Lungfish larvae also have external gills, as does the primitive ray-finned fish Polypterus, though the latter has a structure different from amphibians.
Amphibians
Tadpoles of amphibians have from three to five gill slits that do not contain actual gills. Usually no spiracle or true operculum is present, though many species have operculum-like structures. Instead of internal gills, they develop three feathery external gills that grow from the outer surface of the gill arches. Sometimes, adults retain these, but they usually disappear at metamorphosis. Examples of salamanders that retain their external gills upon reaching adulthood are the olm and the mudpuppy.
Still, some extinct tetrapod groups did retain true gills. A study on Archegosaurus demonstrates that it had internal gills like true fish.
Invertebrates
Crustaceans, molluscs, and some aquatic insects have tufted gills or plate-like structures on the surfaces of their bodies. Gills of various types and designs, simple or more elaborate, have evolved independently in the past, even among the same class of animals. The segments of polychaete worms bear parapodia many of which carry gills. Sponges lack specialised respiratory structures, and the whole of the animal acts as a gill as water is drawn through its spongy structure.
Aquatic arthropods usually have gills which are in most cases modified appendages. In some crustaceans these are exposed directly to the water, while in others, they are protected inside a gill chamber. Horseshoe crabs have book gills which are external flaps, each with many thin leaf-like membranes.
Many marine invertebrates such as bivalve molluscs are filter feeders. A current of water is maintained through the gills for gas exchange, and food particles are filtered out at the same time. These may be trapped in mucus and moved to the mouth by the beating of cilia.
Respiration in the echinoderms (such as starfish and sea urchins) is carried out using a very primitive version of gills called papulae. These thin protuberances on the surface of the body contain diverticula of the water vascular system.
The gills of aquatic insects are tracheal, but the air tubes are sealed, commonly connected to thin external plates or tufted structures that allow diffusion. The oxygen in these tubes is renewed through the gills. In the larval dragonfly, the wall of the caudal end of the alimentary tract (rectum) is richly supplied with tracheae as a rectal gill, and water pumped into and out of the rectum provides oxygen to the closed tracheae.
Plastrons
A plastron is a type of structural adaptation occurring among some aquatic arthropods (primarily insects), a form of inorganic gill which holds a thin film of atmospheric oxygen in an area with small openings called spiracles that connect to the tracheal system. The plastron typically consists of dense patches of hydrophobic setae on the body, which prevent water entry into the spiracles, but may also involve scales or microscopic ridges projecting from the cuticle. The physical properties of the interface between the trapped air film and surrounding water allow gas exchange through the spiracles, almost as if the insect were in atmospheric air. Carbon dioxide diffuses into the surrounding water due to its high solubility, while oxygen diffuses into the film as the concentration within the film has been reduced by respiration, and nitrogen also diffuses out as its tension has been increased. Oxygen diffuses into the air film at a higher rate than nitrogen diffuses out. However, water surrounding the insect can become oxygen-depleted if there is no water movement, so many such insects in still water actively direct a flow of water over their bodies.
The inorganic gill mechanism allows aquatic arthropods with plastrons to remain constantly submerged. Examples include many beetles in the family Elmidae, aquatic weevils, and true bugs in the family Aphelocheiridae, as well as at least one species of ricinuleid arachnid and various mites. A somewhat similar mechanism is used by the diving bell spider, which maintains an underwater bubble that exchanges gas like a plastron. Other diving insects (such as backswimmers, and hydrophilid beetles) may carry trapped air bubbles, but deplete the oxygen more quickly, and thus need constant replenishment.
See also
References
External links
Fish Dissection - Gills exposed Australian Museum. Updated: 11 June 2010. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
Animal anatomy
Arthropod anatomy
Fish anatomy
Organs (anatomy)
Respiratory system | Gill | Biology | 2,825 |
1,728,199 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service%20design | Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.
The purpose of service design methodologies is to establish the most effective practices for designing services, according to both the needs of users and the competencies and capabilities of service providers. If a successful method of service design is adapted then the service will be user-friendly and relevant to the users, while being sustainable and competitive for the service provider. For this purpose, service design uses methods and tools derived from different disciplines, ranging from ethnography to information and management science to interaction design.
Service design concepts and ideas are typically portrayed visually, using different representation techniques according to the culture, skill and level of understanding of the stakeholders involved in the service processes (Krucken and Meroni, 2006). With the advent of emerging technologies from the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the significance of Service Design has increased, as it is believed to facilitate a more feasible productization of these new technologies into the market.
Definition
Service design practice is the specification and construction of processes which deliver valuable capacities for action to a particular user. Service design practice can be both tangible and intangible, and can involve artifacts or other elements such as communication, environment and behaviour. Several of the authors of service design theory including Pierre Eiglier, Richard Normann, Nicola Morelli, propose that services come to existence at the same moment they are both provided and used. In contrast, products are created and "exist" before being purchased and used. While a designer can prescribe the exact configuration of a product, they cannot prescribe in the same way the result of the interaction between users and service providers, nor can they prescribe the form and characteristics of any emotional value produced by the service.
Consequently, service design is an activity that, among other things, suggests behavioural patterns or "scripts" for the actors interacting in the service. Understanding how these patterns interweave and support each other are important aspects of the character of design and service. This allows greater user freedom, and better provider adaptability to the users' needs.
Service design is the process of creating and improving services to meet the needs and expectations of customers.
Service design involves creating a service concept that defines the customer's experience, as well as the physical, human, and technological resources required to deliver the service. Service design focuses on the experience, including customer interactions, service delivery, and support processes.
History
Early service design and theory
Early contributions to service design were made by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank and marketing manager and consultant, in the form of written articles and books. The activity of designing a service was considered to be part of the domain of marketing and management disciplines in the early years. For instance, in 1982 Shostack proposed the integration of the design of material components (products) and immaterial components (services). This design process, according to Shostack, can be documented and codified using a "service blueprint" to map the sequence of events in a service and its essential functions in an objective and explicit manner. A service blueprint is an extension of a user journey map, and this document specifies all the interactions a user has with an organisation throughout their user lifecycle.
Servicescape is a model developed by B.H. Booms and Mary Jo Bitner to focus upon the impact of the physical environment in which a service process takes place and to explain the actions of people within the service environment, with a view to designing environments which accomplish organisational goals in terms of achieving desired responses.
Service design education and practice
In 1991, service design was first introduced as a design discipline by professors Michael Erlhoff and Brigit Mager at Köln International School of Design (KISD). In 2004, the Service Design Network was launched by Köln International School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Linköpings Universitet, Politecnico di Milano and Domus Academy in order to create an international network for service design academics and professionals.
In 2001, Livework, the first service design and innovation consultancy, opened for business in London. In 2003, Engine, initially founded in 2000 in London as an ideation company, positioned themselves as a service design consultancy.
Service design principles
The 2018 book, This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World, by Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider, Marc Stickdorn, and Markus Edgar Hormess, proposes six service design principles:
Human-centred: Consider the experience of all the people affected by the service.
Collaborative: Stakeholders of various backgrounds and functions should be actively engaged in the service design process.
Iterative: Service design is an exploratory, adaptive, and experimental approach, iterating toward implementation.
Sequential: The service should be visualized and orchestrated as a sequence of interrelated actions.
Real: Needs should be researched in reality, ideas prototyped in reality, and intangible values evidenced as physical or digital reality.
Holistic: Services should sustainably address the needs of all stakeholders through the entire service and across the business.
In the 2011 book, This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases, the first principle is “user-centred”. "User" refers to any user of the service system, including customers and employees. Thus, the authors revised “user-centred” to “human-centred” in their new book, This is service design doing, to clarify that 'human' includes service providers, customers, and all others relevant stakeholders. For instance, service design must consider not only the customer experience, but also the interests of all relevant people in retailing.
“Collaborative” and “iterative” come from the principle “co-creative” in this is service design thinking. The service exists with the participation of users, and is created by a group of people from different backgrounds. In most cases, people tend to focus only on the meaning of “collaborative”, stressing the co-operative and interdisciplinary nature of service design, but ignored the caveat that a service only exists with the participation of a user. Therefore, in the definition of new service design principles, the "co-creative" is divided into two principles of "collaborative" and "iterative". "Collaboration" is used to indicate the process of creation by the entire stakeholders from different backgrounds. "Iteration" is used to describe service design is an iterating process keeping evolve to adapt the change of business posture.
“Sequential” means that services need to be logically, rhythmically and visually displayed. Service design is a dynamic process over a period of time. The timeline is important for users in the service system. For example, when a customer shops at an online website, the first information showed up should be the regions where the products can be delivered. In this way, if the customer finds that the products cannot be delivered to their region, they will not continually browse the products on the website.
Service is often invisible and occurs in a state that the user cannot perceive. “Real” means that the intangible service needs to be displayed in a tangible way. For example, when people order food in a restaurant, they can't perceive the various attributes of the food. If we play the cultivation and picking process of vegetables in the restaurant, people can perceive the intangible services in the backstage, such as the cultivation of organic vegetables, and get a quality service experience. This service also helps the restaurant establish a natural and organic brand image to customers.
Thinking in a holistic way is the cornerstone of service design. Holistic thinking needs to consider both intangible and tangible service, and ensure that every moment the user interacts with the service, such moments known as touchpoints, is considered and optimised. Holistic thinking also needs to understand that users have multiple logics to complete an experience process. Thus, a service designer should think about each aspect from different perspectives to ensure that no needs are left unattended-to.
Methodology
Together with the most traditional methods used for product design, service design requires methods and tools to control new elements of the design process, such as the time and the interaction between actors. An overview of the methodologies for designing services is proposed by Nicola Morelli in 2006, who proposes three main directions:
Identification of the actors involved in the definition of the service by means of appropriate analytical tools
Definition of possible service scenarios, verifying use cases, and sequences of actions and actors’ roles in order to define the requirements for the service and its logical and organisational structure
Representation of the service by means of techniques that illustrate all the components of the service, including physical elements, interactions, logical links and temporal sequences
Analytical tools refer to anthropology, social studies, ethnography and social construction of technology. Appropriate elaborations of those tools have been proposed with video-ethnography and different observation techniques to gather data about users’ actions. Other methods, such as cultural probes, have been developed in the design discipline, which aim to capture information on users in their context of use (Gaver, Dunne et al. 1999; Lindsay and Rocchi 2003).
Design tools aim at producing a blueprint of the service, which describes the nature and characteristics of the interaction in the service. Design tools include service scenarios (which describe the interaction) and use cases (which illustrate the detail of time sequences in a service encounter). Both techniques are already used in software and systems engineering to capture the functional requirements of a system. However, when used in service design, they have been adequately adapted to include more information concerning material and immaterial components of a service, as well as time sequences and physical flows. Crowdsourced information has been shown to be highly beneficial in providing such information for service design purposes, particularly when the information has either a very low or very high monetary value. Other techniques, such as IDEF0, just in time and total quality management are used to produce functional models of the service system and to control its processes. However, it is important to note that such tools may prove too rigid to describe services in which users are supposed to have an active role, because of the high level of uncertainty related to the user's behaviour.
Because of the need for communication between inner mechanisms of services and actors (such as final users), representation techniques are critical in service design. For this reason, storyboards are often used to illustrate the interaction of the front office. Other representation techniques have been used to illustrate the system of interactions or a "platform" in a service (Manzini, Collina et al. 2004). Recently, video sketching (Jegou 2009, Keitsch et al. 2010) and prototypes (Blomkvist 2014) have also been used to produce quick and effective tools to stimulate users' participation in the development of the service and their involvement in the value production process.
Standards
In the United Kingdom, British Standard BS 7000-3:1994, part of the BS 7000 - Design management systems series, covers service design.
Public sector service design
Public sector service design is associated with civic technology, open government, e-government, and can constitute either government-led or citizen-led initiatives. The public sector is the part of the economy composed of public services and public enterprises. Public services include public goods and governmental services such as the military, police, infrastructure (public roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, etc.), public transit, public education, along with health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials. Due to new investments in hospitals, schools, cultural institutions and security infrastructures in the last few years, the public sector has expanded in many countries. The number of jobs in public services has also grown; such growth can be associated with the large and rapid social change that is in itself a trigger for fresh design. In this context, some governments are considering service design as a means to bring about better-designed public services.
Denmark
In 2002, MindLab, an innovation public sector service design group was established by the Danish ministries of Business and Growth, Employment, and Children and Education. MindLab was the one of the world's first public sector design innovation labs and their work inspired the proliferation of similar labs and user-centred design methodologies deployed in many countries worldwide. The design methods used at MindLab are typically an iterative approach of prototyping and testing, to evolve not just their government projects, but also the government's organisational structure using ethnographic-inspired user research, creative ideation processes, and visualisation and modelling of service prototypes. In Denmark, design within the public sector has been applied to a variety of projects including rethinking Copenhagen's waste management, improving social interactions between convicts and guards in Danish prisons, transforming services in Odense for mentally disabled adults and more.
United Kingdom
In 2007 and 2008 documents from the British government explore the concept of "user-driven public services" and scenarios of highly personalised public services. The documents proposed a new view on the role of service providers and users in the development of new and highly customised public services, employing user involvement methods. While this approach has been explored through an early initiative in the UK, the possibilities of service design for the public sector are also being researched, picked up, and promoted in European Union countries including Belgium.
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) were originally established under the auspices of the Cabinet Office in 2010, in order to apply nudge theory to try to improve UK government policy interventions and save money. In 2014 BIT was 'spun-out' to become a company allied to Nesta (charity), BIT employees and the UK government each owning a third of this new business. That same year a Nudge unit was added to the United States government under President Obama, referred to as the ‘US Nudge Unit,’ working within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
New Zealand
In recent years New Zealand has seen a significant increase in the use of Service Design approaches and methods applied to challenges faced by the public sector. One instance of service design approaches being applied is with the Family 100 project which focused on the experiences of families living in urban poverty in Auckland. A report "Speaking for Ourselves " and a companion empathy tool "Demonstrating the complexities of being poor "' were released in July 2014. The report and empathy tool were released as the result of a collective service design effort by the Auckland Council, Auckland City Mission, ThinkPlace (a Service Design consultancy) as well as researchers from Waikato University, Massey University, and the University of Auckland. Since its release the report has seen extensive use and has assisted in both the engagement of stakeholders as well as the development of public services focussed on achieving better outcomes for those experiencing urban poverty.
Private sector service design
Real-world service design work can be experienced as new and useful approaches as well as entail some challenges in practice, as identified in field research (see e.g. Jevnaker et al., 2015).
A practical example of service design thinking can be found at the Myyrmanni shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland. The management attempted to improve the customer flow to the second floor as there were queues at the landscape lifts and the KONE steel car lifts were ignored. To improve customer flow to the second floor of the mall (2010) Kone Lifts implemented their 'People Flow' Service Design Thinking by turning the elevators into a Hall of Fame for the 'Incredibles' comic strip characters. Making their elevators more attractive to the public solved the people flow problem. This case of service design thinking by Kone Elevator Company is used in literature as an example of extending products into services.
Service design in health care
Clinical service redesign is an approach to improving quality and productivity in health care. A redesign is ideally clinically led and involves all stakeholders (e.g. primary and secondary care clinicians, senior management, patients, commissioners etc.) to ensure national and local clinical standards are set and communicated across the care settings. By following the patient's journey or pathway, the team can focus on improving both the patient experience and the outcomes of care.
See also
Chief experience officer
Operations management
Service recovery
Service science, management and engineering
Service-dominant logic
References
Further reading
Bechmann, Søren (2010): "Servicedesign", Gyldendal Akademisk.
Curedale, Robert Service Design Process & Methods 3rd Edition, Design Community College Inc.,2018.
Gaver B., Dunne T., Pacenti E., (1999). "Design: Cultural Probes." Interaction 6(1): 21–29.
Hollins, G., Hollins, Bill (1991). Total Design : Managing the design process in the service sector. London, Pitman.
Jegou, F. 2009. Co-design Approaches for Early Phases of Augmented Environments. In: LALOU, S. (ed.) Designing User Friendly Augmented Work Environments: From Meeting Rooms to Digital Collaborative Spaces, Computer Supported Cooperative Work. London: Springer.
Krucken, L. & Meroni, A. 2006. "Building Stakeholder Networks to Develop and Deliver Product-Service-Systems: Practical Experiences on Elaborating Pro-Active Materials for Communication". Journal of Cleaner Production, vol 14 (17)
Løvlie, L., Polaine, A., Reason, B. (2013). Service Design: From Insight to Implementation. New York: Rosenfeld Media. .
Moritz, S. (2005). Service Design: Practical access to an evolving field. London.
Normann, R. and R. Ramirez (1994). Designing Interactive Strategy. From Value Chain to Value Constellation. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
Ramaswamy, R. (1996). Design and management of service processes. Reading, Mass., Addison–Wesley Pub. Co.
Design
IT service management
Innovation
Services marketing | Service design | Technology,Engineering | 3,710 |
26,943,832 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Rosetta%20Foundation | The Rosetta Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes social localization. The Rosetta Foundation was registered as a charitable organization in Ireland. It was an offshoot of the Localization Research Centre (LRC) at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and of the Centre for Next Generation Localization's (CNGL) research initiative, supported by the Irish government.
The Rosetta Foundation developed the Service-Oriented Localization Architecture Solution (SOLAS), whereby volunteer translators and not-for-profit organizations contribute to the translation and distribution of materials for language localization. The first preview of Translation Exchange, now called SOLAS Match, was given on 17 May 2011; the first pilot project using SOLAS Match was launched on 20 October 2012. The Rosetta Foundation launched Translation Commons (or "Trommons") on 18 May 2013.
On 15 June 2017, The Rosetta Foundation merged with Translators Without Borders (TWB). The two now operate jointly under the TWB name. This merger was announced at a Localization World conference in Barcelona.
The foundation was named after the Rosetta Stone.
Goals
As outlined in a paper published by organization founder Reinhard Schaler: Information Sharing across Languages, The Rosetta foundation stated aims is to provide infrastructure for translation and localization.
The concept of "Social Localization" was introduced by Reinhard Schaler, director of the Localization Research Centre at the University of Limerick, at a particular Localization World Silicon Valley session on 10 October 2011. The main objective of social localization is to promote a demand rather than a supply-driven approach to localization. The Rosetta Foundation launched its initiative at a special event in Dublin on 27 October 2011 with volunteers, partner organizations, and funders.
History
European launch
The European launch occurred at the AGIS '09 conference in Limerick, Ireland, from 21 to 23 September 2009. The president of the University of Limerick, Don Barry, announced the launch of The Rosetta Foundation on 21 September 2009, during his welcoming address to the AGIS '09 delegates. AGIS, Action for Global Information Sharing, provided an opportunity for volunteers, localization specialists, and NGOs to come together.
North American launch
The North American launch took place at the Localization World conference in Santa Clara, California, on 20 October 2009. This pre-conference workshop provided an overview of the organizational structure and the strategic plan of The Rosetta Foundation. Participants were introduced to the foundation's translation and localization technology platform, GlobalSight.
International No Language Barrier Day
In 2012, The Rosetta Foundation declared 19 April the international "No Language Barrier Day", meant to raise awareness that access to translation services is an information barrier. The BBB Volunteer Interpretation Service helps communication in Korea, and Interpreters Without Borders from Babel verse.
Translation Commons (Trommons)
On 18 May 2013, The Rosetta Foundation launched Translation Commons, or Trommons, an open, non-profit space for those offering free community language services. Trommons was powered by the Service-Oriented Localisation Architecture Solution (SOLAS). The Rosetta Foundation switched over overproduction on 8 May 2013, attracting communities from 44 countries within hours.
Technology platform
The Rosetta Foundation is involved in developing GlobalSight and Crowdsight. Both systems are open source systems originally developed by Transware and then moved into the open-source space by their new owners, We localize, in early 2009. Sponsored by We localize, GlobalSight is an open-source Globalization Management System (GMS) that helps automate tasks associated with the translation, review, and management of global content. CrowdSight is another open-source application fully integrated with GlobalSight. It is used to engage a quick-turn translator for on-demand content. The GlobalSight community has over 1,500 members.
The first preview of Translation eXchange (now SOLAS Match), a component developed as part of The Rosetta Foundation technology platform in collaboration with the Centre for Next Generation Localization (CNGL), was given in a webinar by Reinhard Schaler and Eoin O Conchúir on 17 May 2011. SOLAS Match was developed as part of the Next Generation Localization research track of the CNGL at the University of Limerick and is based on ideas developed at The Rosetta Foundation Design Fest in San Francisco, 5–6 February 2012, by around 25 localization experts.
Service-Oriented Localization Architecture Solution (SOLAS) design is based on the ORM design principles: O-pen (easy to join and to participate), (serve the task to the volunteer), and (clear). SOLAS consists of SOLAS Match (matching projects and volunteers) and SOLAS Productivity (a suite of translation productivity tools and technologies). SOLAS Match has been released under an open-source GPL license and can be downloaded from the SOLAS web page. SOLAS Productivity currently consists of six components, all sharing an XLIFF-based common data layer:
Workflow Recommender (workflow optimization)
Localization Knowledge Repository (source language checking)
XLIFF Phoenix (re-use of metadata)
MT-Mapper (identification of a suitable MT engine)
LocConnect (orchestration of components)
International advisory committee
Board of directors
Non-profit Technology Enterprise Network
In March 2010, The Rosetta Foundation became a member of the Non-profit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN), a membership organization made up of individuals, non-profit and for-profit organizations which seeks to support non-profit organizations in their use of technology.
See also
Internationalization and localization
Globalization
Association without lucrative purpose
Community Organizations
Master of Nonprofit Organizations
Mutual organization
Non-governmental organization (NGO)
Non-profit organizations and access to public information
Nonprofit technology
Occupational safety and health
Social economy
Supporting organization (charity)
:Category:Nonprofit organizations
Notes
External links
Non-profit Technology Community
Globalization and Localization Association (GALA)
Localization World Conference
Localisation Research Centre
Mozilla Localization Project
I18nguy: Internationalization (I18n), Localization (L10n), Standards, and Amusements
References
Non-profit technology
Non-profit organisations based in the Republic of Ireland
Organisations based in Dublin (city)
Organizations established in 2009
Translation organizations | The Rosetta Foundation | Technology | 1,272 |
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