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On the day of discovery, 19 February, alpha irradiation of the einsteinium target occurred in three three-hour sessions. The cyclotron was in the University of California campus, while the Radiation Laboratory was on the next hill. To deal with this situation, a complex procedure was used: Ghiorso took the catcher foils (there were three targets and three foils) from the cyclotron to Harvey, who would use aqua regia to dissolve it and pass it through an anion-exchange resin column to separate out the transuranium elements from the gold and other products. The resultant drops entered a test tube, which Choppin and Ghiorso took in a car to get to the Radiation Laboratory as soon as possible. There Thompson and Choppin used a cation-exchange resin column and the α-hydroxyisobutyric acid. The solution drops were collected on platinum disks and dried under heat lamps. The three disks were expected to contain respectively the fermium, no new elements, and the mendelevium. Finally, they were placed in their own counters, which were connected to recorders such that spontaneous fission events would be recorded as huge deflections in a graph showing the number and time of the decays. There thus was no direct detection, but by observation of spontaneous fission events arising from its electron-capture daughter Fm. The first one was identified with a "hooray" followed by a "double hooray" and a "triple hooray". The fourth one eventually officially proved the chemical identification of the 101st element, mendelevium. In total, five decays were reported up until 4 a.m. Seaborg was notified and the team left to sleep. Additional analysis and further experimentation showed the produced mendelevium isotope to have mass 256 and to decay by electron capture to fermium-256 with a half-life of 1.5 h.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18899
| 837,857 |
181,359 |
Research has shown that the presence of "L. acidophilus" can produce a variety of probiotic effects in humans, such as; acting as a barrier against pathogens, assisting in lactose digestion, enhancing immune response, and reducing cholesterol level. "L. acidophilus" must exist in concentrations of 10^5 - 10^6 c.f.u (colony-forming units) per mL in order for these effects to be seen. A study conducted at the Wake Forest School of Medicine examined the affects of "L. acidophilus" on the structure and composition of the gut microbiome of mice with respect to the age of the mice. The research established the importance of the interactions between microbes within a gut microbial environment on the overall health of the organism, and the data showed that mice supplemented with "L. acidophilus" had reduced proteobacteria levels, and increased levels of other probiotic bacteria when compared to other mice of similar age. Another study conducted at Marantha Christian University studied the impact of "L. acidophilus" cell free supernatants (a liquid medium containing the metabolites produced by microbial growth) on the growth pattern "Salmonella typhi", the microbe assiciated with Typhoid fever. The study showed that the presence of "L. acidophilus" metabolites significantly inhibited the growth curves displayed by "S. typhi", supporting the idea that "L. acidophilus" presence has a positive impact on the species makeup of a gut microbial community, providing the organism with intestinal health benefits. The innate immune system of "L. acidophilus" also produces antimicrobial peptides. The group of short peptides found there have shown antimicrobial properties such as their strength against viruses and other cell types, including cancer cells. There is also some evidence supporting the use of a symbiotic gel (containing "L. acidophilus") in treating gastrointestinal symptoms in patients who had received a hemodialysis treatment. This gel also reduced the occurrence of vomit, heartburn, and stomachaches. Further study concerning this subject is needed to draw firm conclusions.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=965861
| 181,264 |
736,185 |
The NFL spent years trying to deny and cover up any link that emerged connecting head injuries sustained while playing football with long-term brain disorders. The NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee, first formed in 1994, reported in December 1999 that the number of head injuries had remained "remarkably the same over the course of four years." The committee went a step further in 2004 when it suggested in an article published in "Neurosurgery" that "NFL players have evolved to a state where their brains are less susceptible to injury." Two months after that, MTBI publishes another article that concludes "Players who are concussed and return to the same game have fewer initial signs and symptoms than those removed from play. Return to play does not involve a significant risk of a second injury either in the same game or during the season." However, when Dr. Bennet Omalu examined the brain of former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, he discovered a new brain disease, which he called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. He outlined his findings in a scientific paper published in "Neurosurgery" in July 2005. The NFL's MTBI committee wrote in May 2006 that the article be retracted. Dr. Omalu instead wrote a second paper in the same magazine, this time about former Pittsburgh Steeler Terry Long. Dr. Ira Casson, who was then co-chair of MTBI, denied in a televised interview that there was any link between head injuries sustained playing in the NFL and long-term brain damage. His repeated denials won him the nickname "Dr. No." In September 2009, "The New York Times" published an article of an NFL-funded study stating that former players are 19 times more likely than the general population to have dementia, Alzheimer's or other memory-related diseases. The NFL's spokesperson, Greg Aiello, publicly said, "the study did not formally diagnose dementia, that it was subject to shortcomings of telephone surveys." Two months later, Aiello told "New York Times" reporter Alan Schwarz that "it's quite obvious from the medical research that's been done that concussions can lead to long-term problems." It was the first time any League official had acknowledged a link between the two.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36082813
| 735,798 |
78,254 |
In 1964, while a reader at Birkbeck College, London, (and having had his attention drawn from pure mathematics to astrophysics by the cosmologist Dennis Sciama, then at Cambridge) in the words of Kip Thorne of Caltech, "Roger Penrose revolutionised the mathematical tools that we use to analyse the properties of spacetime". Until then, work on the curved geometry of general relativity had been confined to configurations with sufficiently high symmetry for Einstein's equations to be solvable explicitly, and there was doubt about whether such cases were typical. One approach to this issue was by the use of perturbation theory, as developed under the leadership of John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton. The other, and more radically innovative, approach initiated by Penrose was to overlook the detailed geometrical structure of spacetime and instead concentrate attention just on the topology of the space, or at most its conformal structure, since it is the latter – as determined by the lay of the lightcones – that determines the trajectories of lightlike geodesics, and hence their causal relationships. The importance of Penrose's epoch-making paper "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities" was not its only result, summarised roughly as that if an object such as a dying star implodes beyond a certain point, then nothing can prevent the gravitational field getting so strong as to form some kind of singularity. It also showed a way to obtain similarly general conclusions in other contexts, notably that of the cosmological Big Bang, which he dealt with in collaboration with Dennis Sciama's most famous student, Stephen Hawking. The Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems were inspired by Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri's Raychaudhuri equation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26193
| 78,225 |
1,301,872 |
Tactical medicine has been in existence long before it was officially termed 'tactical EMS.' Tactical medicine has its origins on the battlefield. Since human beings have been fighting in wars, tactical medicine has been applied to those wounded in combat. Early kings had personal medics to care for them in the event that they were injured in battle, while the Spartans utilized persons from lower ranking classes, Helots, to tend to their injuries so they could continue fighting. During World War II as well as the Vietnam War, the need for a higher standard of battlefield medicine became increasingly apparent as up to 20% of soldiers wounded in combat would die from their wounds. It was found that the majority of deaths occurred from exsanguination (bleeding to death) or compromised breathing, usually related to a collapsed lung or airway obstruction. Exsanguination in combat was mitigated by the widespread training of military personnel on tourniquet use. Deaths due to airway compromise and other breathing issues were decreased once medics were trained in Basic life support procedures such as inserting airways and using Bag valve masks. Not surprisingly, many of the same injuries such as penetrating trauma, blast injuries, and airway compromise are sustained by law enforcement in their line of duty. Following the widely publicized active shooter situations such as the Columbine High School massacre, Virginia Tech shooting, and others, major changes took place in law enforcement protocol regarding emergency medical support in the field. One of these changes involved training officers in proper care of their own wounds and the wounds of their partners/teammates through interventions such as properly applying a Tourniquet. Many agencies have also put their officers through Emergency medical technician training to obtain additional medical knowledge. An additional option, which most closely resembles tactical EMS, is utilizing a person previously trained as a medical practitioner to provide medical support for law enforcement by either integrating them into the team itself or allowing them to treat casualties in a warm zone (a location that is deemed to be a mild risk for sustaining injuries). Presently, many law enforcement agencies across the nation have recognized the benefit of training a medical professional as a tactical officer and utilizing them in situations where there is a higher risk of sustaining casualties.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42748863
| 1,301,158 |
1,661,921 |
On 29 November 1942, the 94th Fighter Squadron flew the group's first combat sorties in the Mediterranean theater, strafing a German airfield and recording several aerial victories. However, as the year came to a close, the group's morale sagged. Though the move from England to the desert environment added sometimes 200–300 hours to the life of the liquid-cooled Allisons, few replacement parts and virtually no replacement aircraft were available. Col. Clifford R. Silliman, in charge of Lightning maintenance and repairs for the 1st, 12th and 14th fighter groups, recalled that no hangars, machine shops or service bays were available, forcing ground crews to make repairs in the open air. Crewmen were exposed not only to attack but to virtually incessant blowing sand and dust that continually fouled filters, breathers and lubricants. The searing sun was so intense that mechanics were unable to as much as touch the aluminum surfaces of the fuselage, wings and cowlings with exposed skin, Silliman said. The grating sand found its way not only into engine components and weapons but crewmens' bedding, footwear, clothing, hair, eyes and even their teeth. Pilots recorded some kills, but the loss ratio in air-to-air combat was even at best. For nearly a year, the group moved throughout Algeria and Tunisia, flying bomber escort and providing air coverage for the ground campaign. On 23 February 1943, the group began two days of low-level strafing missions in support of hard-pressed Allied troops at Kasserine Pass, losing several aircraft.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4381244
| 1,660,986 |
1,963,834 |
Agr occurs in 4 allelic subtypes that have an important role in staphylococcal evolution. The corresponding AIPs are mutually cross-inhibitory, which may enhance the evolutionary separation of the 4 groups. The "agr" receptor, AgrC, is a model histidine phosphokinase (HPK) that has been used to decipher the molecular mechanism of signal transduction. AIP binding to the extracellular domain of AgrC causes twisting of the intracellular a-helical domain so as to enable trans-phosphorylation of the active site histidine; the inhibitory AIPs cause the α-helical domain to twist in the opposite direction, preventing trans-phosphorylation. The "agr" QS circuit autoactivates transcription of "agrA" which, in turn upregulates the phenol-souble modulins. More importantly, it activates transcription of a divergently oriented promoter whose transcript, known as RNAIII, is a 514 nt regulatory RNA that encodes δ-hemolysin and is the major effector of the "agr" regulon. RNAIII acts by antisense inhibition or activation of target gene translation. In vitro, early in growth, genes encoding surface proteins important for adhesion and immune evasion (such as "spa" – encoding protein"A") are expressed, enabling the organism to gain a foothold. Later in growth, these genes are down-regulated by RNAIII and those encoding toxins, hemolysins and other virulence-related proteins, are turned on, enabling the organism to establish and promulgate its pathological programs, such as abscess formation. It is assumed that this program operates in vivo as well. As "agr" is essential for staphylococcal contagion, "agr-"defective mutants are not contagious, but enable the organism’s long-term survival in chronic conditions such as surgical implant infections, osteomyelitis or the infected lung in cystic fibrosis. In keeping with this behavior, mutations inactivating "agr" function enhance the stability of biofilms, which are key to the maintenance of chronic infections.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65888401
| 1,962,706 |
107,505 |
In 1982, Don Backer led a group which discovered PSR B1937+21, a pulsar with a rotation period of just 1.6 milliseconds (38,500 rpm). Observations soon revealed that its magnetic field was much weaker than ordinary pulsars, while further discoveries cemented the idea that a new class of object, the "millisecond pulsars" (MSPs) had been found. MSPs are believed to be the end product of X-ray binaries. Owing to their extraordinarily rapid and stable rotation, MSPs can be used by astronomers as clocks rivaling the stability of the best atomic clocks on Earth. Factors affecting the arrival time of pulses at Earth by more than a few hundred nanoseconds can be easily detected and used to make precise measurements. Physical parameters accessible through pulsar timing include the 3D position of the pulsar, its proper motion, the electron content of the interstellar medium along the propagation path, the orbital parameters of any binary companion, the pulsar rotation period and its evolution with time. (These are computed from the raw timing data by Tempo, a computer program specialized for this task.) After these factors have been taken into account, deviations between the observed arrival times and predictions made using these parameters can be found and attributed to one of three possibilities: intrinsic variations in the spin period of the pulsar, errors in the realization of Terrestrial Time against which arrival times were measured, or the presence of background gravitational waves. Scientists are currently attempting to resolve these possibilities by comparing the deviations seen between several different pulsars, forming what is known as a pulsar timing array. The goal of these efforts is to develop a pulsar-based time standard precise enough to make the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1227284
| 107,460 |
84,534 |
The Olson family disputes the official version of events. They maintain that Frank Olson was murdered because, especially in the aftermath of his LSD experience, he had become a security risk who might divulge state secrets associated with highly classified CIA programs, about many of which he had direct personal knowledge. A few days before his death, Frank Olson quit his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division at Detrick, Maryland (later Fort Detrick) because of a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his biological weapons research. Among Olson's concerns were the development of assassination materials used by the CIA, the CIA's use of biological warfare materials in covert operations, experimentation with biological weapons in populated areas, collaboration with former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip, LSD mind-control research, and the use of psychoactive drugs during "terminal" interrogations under a program code-named Project ARTICHOKE. Later forensic evidence conflicted with the official version of events; when Olson's body was exhumed in 1994, cranial injuries indicated that Olson had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window. The medical examiner termed Olson's death a "homicide". In 1975, Olson's family received a $750,000 settlement from the U.S. government and formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby, though their apologies were limited to informed consent issues concerning Olson's ingestion of LSD. On 28 November 2012, the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson. The case was dismissed in July 2013, due in part to the 1976 settlement between the family and government. In the decision dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote, "While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations [in the family's suit], farfetched as they may sound."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42043
| 84,500 |
1,204,417 |
The school's enrollment increased significantly during World War I and alumni began organizing a campaign to build a larger building with campus grounds during the early 1920s. In 1926, ground was broken for a massive Collegiate Gothic stone structure designed by the architects Buckler and Fenhagen on "Collegian Hill". This new four-level structure dubbed "The Castle on the Hill" was designed to accommodate 2,500 students and cost almost $3 million, making it one of the most expensive school projects in America. The new school and grounds officially opened April 10, 1928. The main academic building featured arched windows, cornices, cloisters, gargoyles, stained glass, mahogany paneling, plaster arches, chandeliers, terra cotta tiles, and terrazzo floors with two courtyards and was designed to be expanded in the future with the addition of additional wings and buildings. Following the landmark Supreme Court ruling "Brown v. Board of Education" in May 1954, the school admitted its first Black students in September 1954 without incident. Two years later, the first Black faculty members in school history were assigned to B.C.C. Enrollment at the City College reached a record high of nearly 4,000 students by the mid-1960s, then began to decline in the late-1960s to mid-1970s due, in part, to the opening of newer high schools in the city the suburbs of Baltimore County. In addition to contending with declining enrollment, the school's academic standards also began to decline during the 1970s. The school's once-prestigious A-Course academic track was discontinued in 1973 and a single academic track was offered. In 1978, at the urging of faculty and alumni, City College's landmark main academic building underwent its first-ever major renovations, requiring the school to temporarily relocate for two years. When the campus reopened, B.C.C. admitted female students for the first time in its then-139-year history following a controversial decision by the Baltimore City Public Schools to end City's long-standing tradition of single-sex education.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=713949
| 1,203,772 |
912,278 |
The severity and clinical course of "Angiostrongylus" disease depends significantly on the ingested load of third-stage larvae, creating great variability from case to case, making clinical trials difficult to design, and effectiveness of treatments difficult to discern. Typical conservative medical management including analgesics and sedatives provide minimal relief for the headaches and hyperesthesias. Removing cerebrospinal fluid at regular 3- to 7-day intervals is the only proven method of significantly reducing intracranial pressure and can be used for symptomatic treatment of headaches. This process may be repeated until improvement is shown. There is growing evidence of moderate quality that suggests corticosteroid therapy using prednisolone or dexamethasone has beneficial effect in treating the CNS symptoms related to "A. cantonensis" infections. Although early research did not show treatment with antihelminthic agents (parasite-killing drugs) such as thiobendazole or albendazole effective in improving the clinical course of the illness, a number of recent studies from Thailand and China show that the combination of glucocorticoids and antihelminthics is safe and decreases the duration of headaches and the number of patients who had significant headache. Although the addition of antihelminthic agents for management of "A. cantonensis" infection has a theoretic risk of precipitating a neurologic crisis by releasing an overwhelming load of antigens through simultaneous death of the larvae, no study has shown this to exist in the clinical setting. Additionally, the failure to kill parasites before they attempt to migrate out of the CNS increases the risk of mechanical damage by migrating larvae. Although combination therapy using albendazole and prednisolone has no significant advantage compared to treatment using prednisolone alone in mild cases, the treatment with antihelminthics is demonstrably safe and may have significant benefit for patients with high parasite loads at risk for permanent disability or death.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17048535
| 911,799 |
320,940 |
After the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) announced their desire for a new precision sniper rifle in December 2009, Barrett created the MRAD in accordance with the specifications laid out by SOCOM. Building off of the successful Barrett 98B, the MRAD features multiple improvements such as a folding stock which allows the rifle to be transported more easily. When folded, the stock latches around the bolt handle which increases the security of transporting the rifle without increasing the width when it is unfolded. A major MRAD feature (and requirement of the military PSR solicitation) is a field-changeable barrel/caliber capability. Loosening two Torx screws in the receiver allows the removal of the barrel from the front of the receiver/handguard. With only a bolt face change, and in some cases a magazine change, caliber may be changed. The factory headspaced bolt face is provided with each barrel. Barrel/caliber change can occur in less than two minutes. In addition to the typical military requested calibers of .338 Lapua Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum, and .308 Winchester calibers, Barrett also offers caliber conversion kits in .338 and .300 NORMA Magnum, 7mm Remington Magnum, .260 Remington, and 6.5mm Creedmoor. Barrel lengths are offered in 17" to 26", but not in all calibers. Barrels are available in fluted and heavy profiles. The trigger module can be removed without tools, providing access to user-adjustable trigger pull weight and over travel, and making cleaning easier. Additional features of the MRAD include a single-button length-of-pull adjustment, adjustable cheek rest height, a polymer bolt guide which acts as a dust cover to reduce debris entering the action, a user reversible AR-15 style safety, an ambidextrous magazine release, and the ability to accept standard M16/AR15 style pistol grips. Early MRADs had 30 MOA slope full length 21.75" standard 1913 Picatinny rail on top of the receiver/handguard. Current MRADs feature 20 MOA slope rail. Shorter 2"-4" Picatinny rails sections may be user positioned at 3, 6, and 9 o'clock at several fore/aft positions along the handguard. MRADs are offered in several Cerakote colors.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37962446
| 320,768 |
1,070,904 |
In the mid 1970s the "MUST" designation was applied, (medical unit, self contained, transportable). During the Cold War, with conflict possible against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, active duty MUST units were staffed by all the basic personnel necessary (medics, X-ray techs, pharmacists, cooks, clerks etc.) Doctors, nurses and specialists would be mobilized and mate up with the unit in the field. The unit would be flown to West Germany, withdraw pre-positioned complete hospital MUST equipment and military vehicles from warehouses and then deploy. It contained all necessary functions to provide care for 200 beds, including two intensive care units, eight medical wards, an emergency room, four operating rooms, an orthopedic room, a laboratory, an X-ray, a pharmacy and the unit's transport vehicles. It consisted of hard containers, which would be transported to the designated site, then the wheels would be removed and then expanded. They housed the operating rooms, laboratory, X-ray, and pharmacy. Inflatable shelters were used to provide double wall insulated areas for the patient care areas of the hospital. These "inflatables" required a power system called a "utility pack" (also known as a "U-pack" or "power station") to provide utility services, heat, cooling, inflation, hot water, and filtered air from CBR contaminants. The utility pack (power plant, utility, gas turbine engine driven - Libby Welding Co. Model LPU-71, Airesearch Model PPU85-5, AmerTech Co. Model APP-1, or Hollingsworth Model JHTWX10/96), powered by a centrifugal flow gas turbine engine, provided electricity (60 Hz AC, 400 Hz AC, and 24vdc). At 250 beds the hospital required eight U-packs. Each consumed 30 gallons of jet fuel per hour. After several years of using inflatables they were abandoned in the mid 1980s, largely due to the weight of the inflatables, and the amount of fuel required just to keep the tents from collapsing.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=796157
| 1,070,350 |
231,127 |
Heaven-shaking-thunder bombs, also known as thunder crash bombs, were utilized prior to the siege in 1231 when a Jin general made use of them in destroying a Mongol warship, but during the siege the Mongols responded by protecting themselves with elaborate screens of thick cowhide. This was effective enough for workers to get right up to the walls to undermine their foundations and excavate protective niches. Jin defenders countered by tying iron cords and attaching them to heaven-shaking-thunder bombs, which were lowered down the walls until they reached the place where the miners worked. The protective leather screens were unable to withstand the explosion, and were penetrated, killing the excavators. Another weapon the Jin employed was an improved version of the fire lance called the flying fire lance. The "History of Jin" provides a detailed description: "To make the lance, use chi-huang paper, sixteen layers of it for the tube, and make it a bit longer than two feet. Stuff it with willow charcoal, iron fragments, magnet ends, sulfur, white arsenic [probably an error that should mean saltpeter], and other ingredients, and put a fuse to the end. Each troop has hanging on him a little iron pot to keep fire [probably hot coals], and when it's time to do battle, the flames shoot out the front of the lance more than ten feet, and when the gunpowder is depleted, the tube isn't destroyed." While Mongol soldiers typically held a view of disdain toward most Jin weapons, apparently they greatly feared the flying fire lance and heaven-shaking-thunder bomb. Kaifeng managed to hold out for a year before the Jin emperor fled and the city capitulated. In some cases Jin troops still fought with some success, scoring isolated victories such as when a Jin commander led 450 fire lancers against a Mongol encampment, which was "completely routed, and three thousand five hundred were drowned." Even after the Jin emperor committed suicide in 1234, one loyalist gathered all the metal he could find in the city he was defending, even gold and silver, and made explosives to lob against the Mongols, but the momentum of the Mongol Empire could not be stopped. By 1234, both the Western Xia and Jin dynasty had been conquered.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1909414
| 231,008 |
1,564,961 |
In 2000, Anne Fowler and Susan Brady launched the Early Reading Success (ERS) program, part of the Haskins Literacy Initiative which promotes the science of teaching reading. The ERS program was a demonstration project examining the efficacy of professional development in reading instruction for teachers of children in kindergarten through second grade. The Mastering Reading Instruction program, which combines professional development with Haskins-trained mentors, was a continuation of ERS. David Ostry and colleagues explored the neurological underpinning of motor control using a robot arm to influence jaw movement. Douglas Whalen and Khalil Iskarous pioneered the pairing of ultrasound, used here to monitor articulators that cannot be seen, and Optotrak, an opto-electronic position-tracking device, used here to monitor visible articulators. Christine Shadle joined Haskins in 2004 to head up a project investigating the speech production goals for fricatives. Donald Shankweiler and David Braze developed an eye movement laboratory that combines eye tracking data with brain activity measures for investigating reading processes in normal and disabled readers. Laura Koenig and Jorge C. Lucero studied the development of laryngeal and aerodynamic control in children's speech. In March 2005 Haskins Laboratories moved to a new, state-of-the-art facility on the 9th floor of a commercial building at 300 George Street in New Haven. This provides about 11,000 square feet of office and lab space. In 2008, Ken Pugh of Yale University was named President and Director of Research, succeeding Carol Fowler who remains at Haskins as a Senior Advisor. In 2009, Haskins released a new Strategic Plan featuring new "Birth-to-Five" and Bilingualism initiatives.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6202324
| 1,564,074 |
2,195,261 |
In 1901 he was appointed Lecturer in physics & mathematics at the University of Adelaide under W H Bragg with whom he established a close association over many years & this soon led in 1902 to the opportunity to become the first Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University. In the latter part of 1902 during a period of leave of absence & at his own expense he proceeded on a tour through England & America to gain information on the most recent methods of instruction in Electrical Engineering adopted by the Universities & Higher technical Colleges & at the same time visiting as many as possible of the most important installations and manufacturing businesses. He found that the general type of course was much the same throughout consisting of groundwork in mathematics, physics & chemistry where courses were over three or four years with the specialisation in Electric Engineering taking place during the latter portion. A thesis dealing with some approved portion of work & written up during the vacations was also required from the student & on completion of the course the recognised practice for these men was to take up employment with a reputable manufacturing firm. Experience gained in this way was most essential as men are put through all the departments after which they stay in the one in which they intend to specialise dealing at that time with the further subdivision of Direct & Continuous current. The equipment for teaching in England was considered sufficient for teaching being of small size & less expensive whereas in America there was a tendency towards using large machines with large currents & high EMFs where the methods of handling are considerably different. In the case of smaller plant more responsibility can be taken by a student & this assists the student in gaining confidence in the handling of experiments. On completion of the degree the graduate was accepted by the IEE as sufficient qualification for their associateship & then it became most essential to obtain experience on the Continent, England or America before taking up a permanent position. From time to time openings in large manufacturing works in America, England & Germany became available for graduates.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52676648
| 2,194,011 |
1,184,600 |
On November 17, 1820, travellers reached Macquarie where they observed rookery of elephant seals and penguins. In their reports, expedition participants mentioned parrots, wild cats, and temporary dugouts industrialists from Port Jackson. The crew treated sea hunters with dried bread with butter and grog. The expedition was on the island until November 19, because they were expecting the production of carcasses of a sea elephant with a head for stuffingа. On November 27, the expedition reached 60° south longitude (n the northern hemisphere under this latitude lays Petersburg), and the next day came across close-knit ice fields, because of which, the movement to the south had to be stopped. The ship turned east since the "Vostok" corpus was too weak. On November 29, they passed five big icebergs, after which they made some ice. On December 6, travellers celebrated the day of Saint Nicholas with a prayer. For that, they transferred a priest from "Mirny". After the frosts had started, the team brewed ginger tea with the addition of rum. For a holiday, cooks prepared shchi from fresh pork with sour cabbage or salted lemons (to save some cabbage), and added sago. Raw meat was prepared once or twice per week and was served to sailors together with porridge. Also, on holidays, sailors received a glass of vodka and a half mug of beer diluted from the essence. "By these methods we were able to satisfy staff so much, that many of them forgot about their ailments". On December 12, vessels passed a giant iceberg; Bellingshausen calculated that water stored in it would be enough for world population for 22 years and 86 days if every of 845 million would use only one bucket per day. Despite continuing bad weather, the crew set up a prayer for Christmas. At that day, vessels collided with a piece of sharp ice that shattered the anchor and ripped out underwater copper sheets for three feet. According to the captain's estimates, the crew was saved by a miracle, since the blow occurred during swinging down pitching. Otherwise, the ship would inevitably receive a hole and would be flooded. However, it did not destroy the festive mood of the crew:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40880361
| 1,183,972 |
1,724,076 |
Michael Apafi, who had been elected prince upon the Ottomans' demand on 14 September 1661, closely cooperated with the Diet throughout his reign. He was the first prince to have invited the Orthodox bishop of Transylvania to the Diet. Apafi declared salt mining a state monopoly and introduced a system of tax farming, which increased state revenues. Upon his initiative, the decrees issued between 1653 and 1668 were revised and published in a new law code (the "Compilatae") in early 1669. Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor suspended the constitution of Royal Hungary and dismissed two-thirds of the Hungarian soldiers from the border forts. The dismissed soldiersknown as "Kuruc"sought refuge in Transylvania. Louis XIV of France, who waged a war against the emperor along the Rhine, agreed to pay a subsidy to Apafi for his support of these outlaws in 1677 and 1678. Apafi was forced to join the Ottoman army marching against Vienna in summer 1683, but he returned to Transylvania soon after the Ottomans were defeated on 12 September. Upon Pope Innocent XI's initiative, Leopold I, John III Sobieski, King of Poland, and the Republic of Venice formed the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire in early next year. After the envoys of Apafi and Leopold I signed a treaty in Cârțișoara in spring 1685, Transylvania became a secret member of the alliance. According to the treaty, Apafi accepted the suzerainty of the Hungarian Crown, but Leopold I promised to respect the autonomous status of Transylvania. These provisions were repeated in a new agreement which was signed in Vienna on 28 June 1686, but the new treaty also prescribed that imperial troops should be garrisoned in Deva and Cluj. Although the Diet refused to confirm the agreement, Apafi allowed the imperial troops to winter in Transylvania after a series of victories of the united army of the Holy League in autumn 1687. Even so, Apafi did not fail to send the yearly tribute to the Sublime Porte at the end of the year. Antonio Caraffa, commander of the imperial troops, forced the Three Nations to acknowledge the Habsburgs' hereditary rule and to allow to garrison imperial troops in the main towns. The burghers of Baia Mare, Brașov, Bistrița, and Sibiu denied to yield, but Caraffa submitted them by force in February 1688. Leopold I was only willing to confirm the freedom of religion when Transylvanian delegates reminded him to his previous promises.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4745801
| 1,723,106 |
728,395 |
Patrick Geddes had first advocated for the "real and active participation" of citizens when working in the British Raj, arguing against the "Dangers of Municipal Government from above" which would cause "detachment from public and popular feeling, and consequently, before long, from public and popular needs and usefulness". Further on, self-build was researched by Raymond Unwin in the 1930s in his "Town Planning in Practice". The Italian anarchist architect Giancarlo De Carlo then argued in 1948 that "“The housing problem cannot be solved from above. It is a problem of the people, and it will not be solved, or even boldly faced, except by the concrete will and action of the people themselves", and that planning should exist "as the manifestation of communal collaboration". Through the Architectural Association School of Architecture, his ideas caught John Turner, who started working in Peru with Eduardo Neira. He would go on working in Lima from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s. There he found that the "barrios" were not slums, but were rather highly organised and well-functioning. As a result, he came to the conclusion that:"When dwellers control the major decisions and are free to make their own contributions in the design, construction or management of their housing, both this process and the environment produced stimulate individual and social well-being. When people have no control over nor responsibility for key decisions in the housing process, on the other hand, dwelling environments may instead become a barrier to personal fulfillment and a burden on the economy."The role of the government was to provide a framework within which people would be able to work freely, for example by providing them the necessary resources, infrastructure and land. Self-build was later again taken up by Christopher Alexander, who led a project called People Rebuild Berkeley in 1972, with the aim to create "self-sustaining, self-governing" communities, though it ended up being closer to traditional planning.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45346
| 728,011 |
1,837,727 |
Although there is significant insight as to how OPVs work, it is still difficult to relate the device's functionality to local film structures. This difficulty may be attributed to the minimal current generation at a given point within OPVs. Through pc-AFM, OPV devices can be probed at nano-scale level and can help to increase our fundamental knowledge of mechanisms involved in OPVs at nano-scale level. pc-AFM is capable of gathering information such as the mapping of photocurrents, differences in film morphology, determination of donor-acceptor domains, current density-voltage plots, quantum efficiencies, and approximate charge carrier mobilities. One of the other notable characteristics of pc-AFM is its ability to provide concurrent information regarding the topological and photocurrent properties of the device at nano-scale. Using this concurrent sampling method, the sample handling is minimized and can provide more accurate results. In a study by Pingree et al., pc-AFM was used to measure how spatial deviations in the photocurrent generation developed with different processing techniques. The authors were able to compare these photocurrent variations to the duration of the annealing process. They have concluded that lengthening the annealing time allows for improved nano-scale phase separation as well as created a more ordered device. Actual times for the annealing process vary depending on the properties of the polymers used. The authors have shown that external quantum efficiency (EQE) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) levels reach a maximum at certain annealing times whereas while the electron and hole mobility's do not show the corresponding trends. Therefore, while lengthening the annealing time can increase the photocurrents within the OPV, there is a practical limit to after which the benefits may not be substantial. Besides functional properties, pc-AFM can also be used to interrogate the composition heterogeneity of OPVs when combined with either Raman or infrared (IR) spectroscopy, and it is especially valuable for studying their degradation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31698140
| 1,836,678 |
2,153,307 |
Upon completing his formal education, Islam remained in California and worked for the Optical Networking Research group of JDS Uniphase Corporation and the Quantum Science Research group of the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories during 2001–04. Subsequently, he accepted a faculty position at the University of California, Davis in 2004. As a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Islam and his research team demonstrated the first 3D transistor array based on horizontally suspended silicon nano-bridges. He co-founded two start-up companies based on his inventions with the support of UC Davis, UC Office of the President, and Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization (NIREC). He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for his role as the co-founder of Atocera, a start-up that plans to bring its silicon surgical and razor blades to market as a less expensive alternative to ceramic and diamond blades. Atocera received Sacramento Regional Innovation Award for Advanced Manufacturing in 2018. He also demonstrated the conversion of vertically oriented light waves into an ensemble of laterally oriented collective guided light beams in semiconductor thin films by integrating a 2D periodic array of nanoscale holes and implemented such slowly propagating trapped-light to enhance photon material interaction in ultrafast and highly efficient photodetectors.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67474663
| 2,152,076 |
312,470 |
Human mating is inherently non-random. Despite the common trope "opposites attract," humans generally prefer mates who share the same or similar traits, such as genetics, quantitative phenotypes like height or body-mass index, skin pigmentation, the level of physical attractiveness, disease risk (including cancers and mental disorders), race or ethnicity, facial features, socioeconomic factors (such as (potential) income level and occupational prestige), cultural backgrounds, moral values, religious beliefs, political orientation, (perceived) personality traits (such as conscientiousness or extraversion), behavioral characteristics (such as the level of generosity or the propensity for alcoholism), educational attainment, and IQ or general intelligence. Moreover, whereas in the past marriage across status lines was more common — in the sense that the woman typically looked for a man of high status (hypergamy), a sign of access to resources, while the man was usually willing to marry down the socioeconomic ladder (hypogamy) if the woman had good domestic skills, was young and good-looking (all proxies of fertility) —, in the modern world, people tend to desire well-educated and intelligent children; this goal is better achieved by marrying bright people with high incomes, resulting in the intensification of economic assortative mating. Indeed, better educated parents tend to have children who are not only well-educated but also healthy and successful. Furthermore, the age gap between two partners has also declined. In other words, men and women became more symmetrical in the socioeconomic traits they desire in a mate. Among the aforementioned traits, the correlations in age, race or ethnicity, religion, educational attainment, and intelligence between spouses are the most pronounced, while height is one of the most heritable, with mating partners sharing 89% of the genetic variations affecting the preference for height.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41162624
| 312,302 |
662,886 |
Fritz had a normal birth. However, his motor development was delayed and he was very clumsy which worried his parents. He only learned to walk at fourteen months. He also had problems with learning self-help skills such as washing and cleaning. However, he also learnt to talk much earlier at ten months and quickly expressed himself in formal sentence structure "like an adult." Asperger noted that from a young age, Fritz never did what he was told and would often intentionally do the exact opposite. Punishment did not deter him. He was restless and fidgety and had "a destructive urge." Any toys left around him would soon be broken. He did not get along well with other children either. They "wound him up" and he once attacked one with a hammer. He cared little for the danger posed to himself or others. He was kicked out of kindergarten on the first day. He attacked other children, paced about nonchalantly during the lesson and destroyed the coat-rack. Fritz did not care if people were upset with him and seemed to enjoy their angry responses to his disobedience. Despite this, he would also sometimes hug other classmates without provocation. Asperger noted that Fritz was indifferent to the authority of adults and would use abrasive, informal language when speaking to them (he used the informal "du" and never the formal "sie"). He also displayed repetitive movements such as hitting, jumping and echolalia. Fritz had poor eye contact and would never look at people when speaking to them. He also spoke in a dull, monotone voice. He did however, sometimes sing "I don't like to say that" in response to a question or beat rhythms on objects around him. He experienced serious stomach problems from eating non-edible things such as pencils and from licking the tables. He did very poorly in PE because he was very clumsy and never swung in any rhythm. He would frequently run away from class or begin hitting and jumping up and down. When it came to intelligence tests, it was impossible to get a good measure of his intelligence as his responses to test questions varied. Sometimes he would jump up and move around or just answer with nonsense (Asperger implies here it might be deliberate) and other times he might give an answer considerably advanced for his age. Asperger noted that it almost seemed up to chance. To some questions, he would give a very precise answer and to others he would mumble nonsense.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13302907
| 662,541 |
1,965,852 |
On 28 January 1915 USRC "Unalga" became USCGC "Unalga" by virtue of the establishment of the United States Coast Guard by merger of the United States Revenue Cutter Service with the United States Life-Saving Service. In February 1915 additional duties were assigned enforcing the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 which related to prohibited pelagic sealing in the Bering Sea. Patrol work during 1915 and 1916 consisted of summers in Alaskan waters with sealing treaty duties, law enforcement, search and rescue, medical assistance to fishermen and others, and the delivery of mail to remote camps. Winters were spent at various locations along the Pacific Northwest coast doing law enforcement patrol work. In January 1917, "Unalga" was assigned her first winter patrol in Alaskan waters at the urging of representatives of the fishing industry to provide medical services to crews of fishing vessels as well as search and rescue work in remote waters. She stopped in Sitka, Alaska to investigate reports of a measles epidemic and to take on more coal for her first winter mission into the Gulf of Alaska. "Unalga"'s first winter patrol was begun 30 January during a squall with hurricane force winds that iced the cutter over and threaten to sink her with the additional weight. After the starboard whaleboat was smashed by heavy seas and the radio masts snapped from the weight of ice, Captain Frederick Dodge made for the shelter of Yakutat Bay. The cutter was listing starboard at twenty degrees and the crew had to clear ice from the decks and machinery with axes and steam hoses. The crew of "Unalga" spent the next week repairing damage to the cutter while the surgeon treated the ills of inhabitants of Yakutat and gave the resident missionary a short course in medicine. Each time the cutter would leave the shelter of the bay another gale would appear, but Dodge took care to seek shelter before the cutter was as severely iced as the first time. "Unalga" was recalled to Seattle on 6 March after steaming 3000 miles, boarding 342 vessels, having given medical aid to 19 individuals, of whom three were fishermen.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42183952
| 1,964,723 |
1,651,128 |
In "Sweetness and Power", written by Sidney Mintz in 1985, details examples of mono-cropping, or planting massive areas with one cash crop, in several Caribbean Islands, including Cuba. He states that Cuba went from being an economically diverse place with many small scale subsistence producers to a mono-crop plantation system dependent on cash from its sugar crop and substantial food imports for the later centuries of the Spanish Colonial Period. He describes Cuba as an example of growing impoverishment and malnutrition concurrent with increasing concentration of land and other resources in fewer hands. Gross and Underwood illustrate the mid Twentieth Century example of the advent of sisal production in Northeastern Brazil. These authors detail a vicious cycle of the unfulfilled promises of sisal production for smallholders; because owners of sisal processing machines did not think small farms worth their time, small holders could not process and sell their sisal and were often forced to work as laborers on large farms. Sisal is cited as being particularly insidious because it is hard to eradicate once introduced and makes subsequent subsistence production virtually impossible. This article treats a common situation of households prioritizing working males in food allocation, exposing growing children to malnutrition, particularly under nutrition and micronutrient deficiency, and all of its attendant ills. Edgar discusses how exclusive planting of cotton in the Southeastern United States during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries caused substantial land degradation, lead to a great deal of land expropriation from small scale farmers, and occurred in a context of widespread malnutrition. Especially in Today's complex, accelerated version of globalization, cash cropping is intimately linked with the delocalization of diets and the commoditization of food and has profound, though varied, implications for food security and nutritional status.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17200325
| 1,650,196 |
907,395 |
A group of African American veterans of World War II, barred from admission on the grounds of race and calling themselves the Negro Goodwill Council, protested to Governor Beauford Jester about the exclusion of blacks from Lamar State College. They attempted to block passage of the bill to change Lamar into a state-supported senior college, which resulted in John Gray, Lamar's president, creating a black branch of Lamar called Jefferson Junior College. It opened with evening classes at Charlton-Pollard High School. In 1952, James Briscoe, a graduate of Charlton-Pollard High School, applied to Lamar. His parents were laborers and members of the Beaumont chapter of the NAACP. The admissions office notified him that on the basis of his transcript, he was qualified to enroll for the spring term of 1951. On January 29, when Briscoe went to register for classes, Lamar's acting president G. A. Wimberly explained that a mistake had been made and suggested he apply to TSUN, now named Texas Southern University. State law, he said, created Lamar for whites only. In the summer of 1955, Versie Jackson and Henry Cooper Jr. became the lead plaintiffs of a class action lawsuit, Jackson v. McDonald, which sought to end Lamar's policy of racial segregation. Lamar Cecil, federal judge, ruled on July 30, 1956, that Lamar's “white youth” only admissions policy was unconstitutional and that September, a total of twenty-six blacks were admitted to the college amid violent protests at the campus gates and throughout the region for a number of weeks until Texas Rangers arrived and the rule of law restored.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=624221
| 906,917 |
420,478 |
In a similar manner, an individual can respond to other environmental stimuli, factors or challenges differently according to specific genetic differences or alleles. These other factors include the diet and specific nutrients within the diet, physical activity, alcohol and tobacco use, sleep (bed time, duration), and any of a number of exposures (or exposome), including toxins, pollutants, sunlight (latitude north–south of the equator), among any number of others. The diet, for example, is modifiable and has significant impact on a host of cardiometabolic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke, myocardial infarction, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In the clinic, typically assessed risks of these conditions include blood lipids (triglyceride, and HDL, LDL and total cholesterol), glycemic traits (plasma glucose and insulin, HOMA-IR, beta cell function as HOMA-BC), obesity anthropometrics (BMI/obesity, adiposity, body weight, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio), vascular measures (diastolic and systolic blood pressure), and biomarkers of inflammation. Gene–environment interactions can modulate the adverse effects of an allele that confers increased risk of disease, or can exacerbate the genotype–phenotype relationship and increase risk, in a manner often referred to as nutrigenetics. A catalog of genetic variants that associate with these and related cardiometabolic phenotypes and modified by common environmental factors is available.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2423780
| 420,273 |
1,907,636 |
Dietrich von Hildebrand's influence extended beyond the narrow issue of a religious denomination. Sattler also came to share his uncle's hostility to the Nazi party which took power in January 1933 and spent the next few months transforming the country into a one-party dictatorship. Dieter Sattler's marriage to Maria Clara Schiedges took place on 19 May 1933 in Salzburg, at that stage still just across the border from Nazi Germany, in Austria. In 1932 Sattler had acquired a property at Grendach near Taching am See, close to Salzburg but on the German side of the frontier. The region was far off the beaten track, but his brother, the landscape painter Berhard Sattler, already lived in an adjacent hamlet. Bernhard had "discovered" the region which he valued for its visual and artistic beauty. Dieter Sattler caused a seemingly unprecedented surge in employment opportunities for the small holders in the village by having the former cowshed on his property converted into a family home. At this stage, however, after the marriage the Sattler couple (soon a young family) settled in Berlin where Sattler still hoped to continue with his studies and obtain a habilitation (higher degree). He was supervised for his studies by a professor who shortly after this had his teaching permit withdrawn because, according to the authorities, he was Jewish. After this Sattler found his will to join the nation's academic establishment had disappeared. Nevertheless, while pursuing his career as an architect he continued to take an active interest in other matters. For example, there were still lengthy trips abroad, and he organised at least one concert tour by the brilliant (and already world-famous) Russian pianist, Vladimir Horowitz.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54975038
| 1,906,540 |
2,042,235 |
Revolutionary changes in the curriculum of pharmaceutical education were one of Dr. Prescott’s biggest accomplishments. Throughout the nineteenth century, a prerequisite for the higher level pharmaceutical study was based mostly on apprenticeship programs where pharmacists learned on a practical basis. According to professor Edward Parrish, member of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the goal of the apprenticeship programs were to give students a pre-professional experience and prepare them for admission to courses offered by colleges. However, there were no legal requirements for preparatory training in high school prior to the enrollment in an apprenticeship program. So College of Pharmacy continued to enroll students that were experts on memorizing drug names and doing hands-on work but lacked in fundamental knowledge of basic science. Once Dr. Prescott gained responsibility of the School of Pharmacy in University of Michigan, he took quite an innovative step by launching a program that not only offered extensive laboratory experience in basic science but also eliminated the requirement for apprenticeship for the first time in history. Many including, the editor of American Journal of Pharmacy, William Procter were skeptical about the merit of the diploma offered at the University due to such non-traditional course requirements. Dr. Prescott was even denied to be a delegate to the American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA) meeting in 1871. According to the clause of byLaws of APhA, “All colleges of Pharmacy or local Pharmaceutical Organizations shall be entitled to five representatives” but the University of Michigan did not fall under the definition of School of Pharmacy or Pharmaceutical Organization due to its different curriculum. Following the report of APhA, Dr. Prescott presented his response saying that apprenticeship was not the best way to teach students since it ignored the nature of materials the students deal with. He further supported his argument by saying that “the pharmacist that trained the apprentice was also a recipient of a non-scientifically oriented apprenticeship” so there was no net advancement in actual pharmaceutical knowledge. Besides advocating for laboratory-based pharmaceutical education, he promoted preparatory courses prior to college enrollment. He made “three years' schooling in Latin and German, algebra through quadratic equations, botany, and elementary physics, besides arithmetic through involution and evolution, and the correct writing of English” a requirement for the University of Michigan prior to enrollment to ensure proper understanding for the higher level courses. Dr. Prescott’s innovative steps might not have been welcomed at first but eventually, educators and leaders in charge of pharmaceutical education realized the importance of his acts and adapted to the new changes.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5148188
| 2,041,055 |
1,694,998 |
Intra organismic communication is not solely the passage of information within an organism, but concrete interaction between and within cells of an organism mediated by signs. This could be on a cellular and molecular level. An organism's ability to interpret its own biotic information is extremely important. If the organism is injured, falls ill, or must respond to danger, it needs to be able to process that physiological information and adjust its behavior. Take sweating for example, when the human body starts to overheat, specialized glands release sweat which absorb the heat and then evaporates. This communication is imperative to survival in many species including plant life. Plants lack a central nervous system so they rely on a decentralized system of chemical messengers. This allows them to grow in response to factors such as wind, light, plant architecture. Using these chemical messengers, they can react to the environment and assess the best growth pattern. Essentially plants grow to optimize their metabolic efficiency. Humans also rely on chemical messengers for survival. Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is a hormone that is secreted during times of great stress. It binds to receptors on the surface of cells and activates a pathway that alters the structure of glucose. This causes a rapid increase in blood sugar, which is just one of the effects adrenaline has on humans. It also activates the central nervous system increasing heart rate breathing rates, this prepares the muscles for the body's natural fight or flight response. Organisms rely on many different means of intra organismic communication. Whether it is through neural connections, chemical messengers, or hormones it all evolved to respond to threats, maintain homeostasis and ensure self preservation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8694335
| 1,694,047 |
283,470 |
Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations to their surrounding worlds. Depth perception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world. Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects. Sound waves go around corners and interact with obstacles, creating a complex pattern that includes useful information about the sources of and distances to objects. Larger animals naturally make lower-pitched sounds as a consequence of their size. The range over which an animal hears, on the other hand, is determined by adaptation. Homing pigeons, for example, can hear the very low-pitched sound (infrasound) that carries great distances, even though most smaller animals detect higher-pitched sounds. Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that are thought to have been significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. For example, salt and sugar were apparently both valuable to the human or pre-human inhabitants of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, so present-day humans have an intrinsic hunger for salty and sweet tastes. The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain. Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive. An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation. For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light. Sensory abilities of different organisms often coevolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9703
| 283,317 |
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His work was hampered by various malfunctions: when the Panoramic Camera was turned on, it appeared to take so much power from one of the CSM's electrical systems, that it initiated the spacecraft Master Alarm. It was immediately shut off, though later analysis indicated that the drain might have been from the spacecraft's heaters, which came on at the same time. Its work was also hampered by the delay in the beginning of "Casper"'s orbital scientific work and the early return to Earth, and by a malfunction resulting in the overexposure of many of the photographs. Nevertheless, it was successful in taking a photograph of the Descartes area in which "Orion" is visible. The Mass Spectrometer boom did not fully retract following its initial extension, as had happened on Apollo 15, though it retracted far enough to allow the SPS engine to be fired safely when "Casper" maneuvered away from "Orion" before the LM began its Moon landing attempt. Although the Mass Spectrometer was able to operate effectively, it stuck near its fully deployed position prior to the burn that preceded rendezvous, and had to be jettisoned. Scientists had hoped to supplement the lunar data gained with more on the trans-earth coast, but Apollo 15 data could be used instead. The Mapping Camera also did not function perfectly; later analysis found it to have problems with its glare shield. The changes to the flight plan meant that some areas of the lunar surface that were supposed to be photographed could not be; also, a number of images were overexposed. The Laser Altimeter, designed to accurately measure the spacecraft altitude, slowly lost accuracy due to reduced power, and finally failed just before it was due to be used for the last time.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1970
| 265,879 |
760,222 |
Nonetheless, considering the current problem of the electric power source solved (for example with the availability of a still missing multi-megawatt compact fusion reactor), one could imagine future aircraft of a new kind silently powered by MHD accelerators, able to ionize and direct enough air downward to lift several tonnes. As external flow systems can control the flow over the whole wetted area, limiting thermal issues at high speeds, ambient air would be ionized and radially accelerated by Lorentz forces around an axisymmetric body (shaped as a cylinder, a cone, a sphere…), the entire airframe being the engine. Lift and thrust would arise as a consequence of a pressure difference between the upper and lower surfaces, induced by the Coandă effect. In order to maximize such pressure difference between the two opposite sides, and since the most efficient MHD converters (with a high Hall effect) are disk-shaped, such MHD aircraft would be preferably flattened to take the shape of a biconvex lens. Having no wings nor airbreathing jet engines, it would share no similarities with conventional aircraft, but it would behave like a helicopter whose rotor blades would have been replaced by a "purely electromagnetic rotor" with no moving part, sucking the air downward. Such concepts of flying MHD disks have been developed in the peer review literature from the mid 1970s mainly by physicists Leik Myrabo with the Lightcraft, and Subrata Roy with the Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=182734
| 759,816 |
1,226,489 |
In 1967, S. B. Carter reported the use of shadow-evaporated palladium islands for cell attachment. After this first bio-MEMS study, subsequent development in the field was slow for around 20 years. In 1985, Unipath Inc. commercialized ClearBlue, a pregnancy test still used today that can be considered the first microfluidic device containing paper and the first microfluidic product to market. In 1990, Andreas Manz and H. Michael Widmer from Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), Switzerland first coined the term micro total analysis system (μTAS) in their seminal paper proposing the use of miniaturized total chemical analysis systems for chemical sensing. There have been three major motivating factors behind the concept of μTAS. Firstly, drug discovery in the last decades leading up to the 1990s had been limited due to the time and cost of running many chromatographic analyses in parallel on macroscopic equipment. Secondly, the Human Genome Project (HGP), which started in October 1990, created demand for improvements in DNA sequencing capacity. Capillary electrophoresis thus became a focus for chemical and DNA separation. Thirdly, DARPA of the US Department of Defense supported a series of microfluidic research programs in the 1990s after realizing there was a need to develop field-deployable microsystems for the detection of chemical and biological agents that were potential military and terrorist threats. Researchers started to use photolithography equipment for microfabrication of microeletromechanical systems (MEMS) as inherited from the microelectronics industry. At the time, the application of MEMS to biology was limited because this technology was optimized for silicon or glass wafers and used solvent-based photoresists that were not compatible with biological material. In 1993, George M. Whitesides, a Harvard chemist, introduced inexpensive PDMS-based microfabrication and this revolutionized the bio-MEMS field. Since then, the field of bio-MEMS has exploded. Selected major technical achievements during bio-MEMS development of the 1990s include:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19081158
| 1,225,829 |
993,315 |
In 1975, the freshman and sophomore years consisted of interdisciplinary studies, and were organized in a modular format, with each course lasting a few weeks or months. All students, regardless of their previous education, were required to attend 24 interdisciplinary courses, some of which consisted of pre-recorded video tapes of "resident faculty" who were not on campus, while graduate students and teaching assistants played the video tapes and conducted discussions. Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin said that, even though he participated in a symposium on SCI, the use of his name in the MIU catalogue was "perilously close to false advertising". John Lewis, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who created video-taped lectures for MIU, was supportive, saying that TM "unblocks the student's pathways to education". During this period, an open admissions policy was instituted, and transfer students were welcomed regardless of their academic history. In 1976, the accreditation evaluation team from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools said the 19 senior and 20 assistant faculty were "creative in their vision for higher education and eminently qualified", and the university was granted "candidate for accreditation" status. At that time, faculty and administrators were paid "approximately the same base salary of $275 per month", with additional compensation "on a sliding scale for those with spouses and children", plus free housing in university dormitories. On campus, drugs and alcohol were "shunned" and a "strong sense of community" was said to pervade the institution.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=271937
| 992,798 |
2,163,880 |
On August 16, 2010, the Los Alamos Study Group filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which states that the original environmental impact statement (EIS) completed in 2003, with a record of decision (ROD) in 2004, is not a legitimate EIS for the current design and is a direct violation of the NEPA. The lawsuit states that the current CMRR-NF project needs to be halted until a new EIS is studied, accessing the need for this facility and its purpose and studying thoroughly all alternatives, including other locations, upgrading existing facilities, or canceling the project all together. NNSA decided to complete a new "Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement" on the project, but LASG refused to drop the suit. Judge Judith Herrera dismissed the lawsuit on May 23, 2011, saying the case was “prudentially moot” and “not yet ripe”. NNSA officials—without any public review—revamped the design of the CMRR-NF, using what they describe as a multi-functional “hotel concept” that can be used in the future for a range of unspecified nuclear weapons activities. LANL officials were considering using the 400,000 cubic yards of excavated volcanic ash from construction to cap two old waste disposal sites that contain 14 million cubic feet of nuclear and chemical residues. The lawsuit claimed this was a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and noted "The decision to leave 14 million cubic feet of nuclear and chemical waste in shallow unlined disposal pits covered by this material would be a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, with far-reaching impacts."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28951534
| 2,162,644 |
1,244,659 |
Philosopher Neven Sesardić, while not dismissive of developmental systems theory, argues that its proponents forget that the role between levels of interaction is ultimately an empirical issue, which cannot be settled by "a priori" speculation; Sesardić observes that while the emergence of lung cancer is a highly complicated process involving the combined action of many factors and interactions, it is not unreasonable to believe that smoking has an effect on developing lung cancer. Therefore, though developmental processes are highly interactive, context dependent, and extremely complex, it is incorrect to conclude main effects of heredity and environment are unlikely to be found in the "messiness". Sesardić argues that the idea that changing the effect of one factor always depends on what is happening in other factors is an empirical claim, as well as a false one; for example, the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis produces a protein that is toxic to caterpillars. Genes from this bacterium have been placed into plants vulnerable to caterpillars and the insects proceed to die when they eat part of the plant, as they consume the toxic protein. Thus, developmental approaches must be assessed on a case by case basis and in Sesardić's view, DST does not offer much if only posed in general terms. Hereditarian Psychologist Linda Gottfredson differentiates the "fallacy of so–called "interactionism"" from the technical use of "gene-environment interaction" to denote a non–additive environmental effect conditioned upon genotype. “Interactionism's” over–generalization cannot render attempts to identify genetic and environmental contributions meaningless. Where behavioural genetics attempts to determine portions of "variation" accounted for by genetics, environmental–developmentalistics like DST attempt to determine the "typical" course of human development and erroneously conclude the common theme is readily changed.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8355930
| 1,243,986 |
1,582,155 |
Chlorovirus titers are variable by season and location, but typically fluctuate between 1 and 100 PFU/mL, although high abundances of up to 100,000 PFU/mL may occur in some environments. Due to the rich genetic diversity and high specialization of individual species with respect to infectious range, variations in their ecology are not unusual, resulting in unique spatio-temporal patterns, which ultimately depend on lifestyle and nature of the host. As such, previous survey data highlighted two prominent seasonal abundance peaks for both "Chlorella variabilis" NC64A and "Chlorella variabilis" Syngen viruses — one in late fall, and the other in late spring to mid-summer — which is likely attributed to the fact that they share a host species. Conversely, "Chlorella heliozoae" SAG viruses peaked at different times of the year and generally exhibited more variability in titers, as compared to the NC64A and Syngen viruses. Additionally, studies revealed that chloroviruses demonstrate some resilience in response to decreased temperatures observed during the winter season, characterized by presence of infectious particles under ice layers in a stormwater management pond in Ontario, Canada. Further, DeLong et al. (2016) suggest that predation by small crustaceans can play an indirect role in titer fluctuations, as degradation of protist cells passing through the digestive tract results in liberation of large numbers of unicellular algae that become susceptible to viral infection due to disruption of endosymbiosis. Overall, seasonal abundance of chloroviruses depends not only on the host species, but also on the abundance of other microorganisms, general nutrient status and ecological conditions.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44369339
| 1,581,265 |
1,765,165 |
Pharmacogenomics studies how responses to pharmaceutical products differ in efficacy and toxicity based on variations in the patient's genome; it is a correlation of drug response to gene expression in a patient. Jeremy K. Nicholson of the Imperial College, London, used a postgenomic viewpoint to understand adverse drug reactions and the molecular basis of human disesase. His group studied gut microbial metabolic profiles and were able to see distinct differences in reactions to drug toxicity and metabolism even among various geographical distributions of the same race. Affinity monolith chromatography provides another approach to drug response measurements. David Hage at the University of Nebraska binds ligands to monolithic supports and measures the equilibrium phenomena of binding interactions between drugs and serum proteins. A monolith-based approach at the University of Bologna, Italy, is currently in use for high-speed screening of drug candidates in the treatment of Alzheimer's. In 2003, Regnier and Liu of Purdue University described a multi-dimensional LC procedure for identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in proteins. SNPs are alterations in the genetic code that can sometimes cause changes in protein conformation, as is the case with sickle cell anemia. Monoliths are particularly useful in these kinds of separations because of their superior mass transport capabilities, low backpressures coupled with faster flow rates, and relative ease of modification of the support surface.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22131699
| 1,764,172 |
1,604,287 |
A recent study using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) linked an increased neural activity in the occipito-temporal region of the brain to the visual categorization of facial expressions. Results focus on a negative peak in the ERP that occurs 170 milliseconds after the stimulus onset. This action potential, called the N170, was measured using electrodes in the occipito-temporal region, an area already known to be changed by face stimuli. Studying by using the EEG, and ERP methods allow for an extremely high temporal resolution of 4 milliseconds, which makes these kinds of experiments extremely well suited for accurately estimating and comparing the time it takes the brain to perform a certain function. Scientists used classification image techniques, to determine what parts of complex visual stimuli (such as a face) will be relied on when patients are asked to assign them to a category, or emotion. They computed the important features when the stimulus face exhibited one of five different emotions. Stimulus faces exhibiting fear had the distinguishing feature of widening eyes, and stimuli exhibiting happiness exhibited a change in the mouth to make a smile. Regardless of the expression of the stimuli's face, the region near the eyes affected the EEG before the regions near the mouth. This revealed a sequential, and predetermined order to the perception and processing of faces, with the eye being the first, and the mouth, and nose being processed after. This process of downward integration only occurred when the inferior facial features were crucial to the categorization of the stimuli. This is best explained by comparing what happens when participants were shown a face exhibiting fear, versus happiness. The N170 peaked slightly earlier for the fear stimuli at about 175 milliseconds, meaning that it took a participants less time to recognize the facial expression. This is expected because only the eyes need to be processed to recognize the emotion. However, when processing a happy expression, where the mouth is crucial to categorization, downward integration must take place, and thus the N170 peak occurred later at around 185 milliseconds. Eventually visual neuroscience aims to completely explain how the visual system processes all changes in faces as well as objects. This will give a complete view to how the world is constantly visually perceived, and may provide insight into a link between perception and consciousness.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5212945
| 1,603,386 |
1,015,622 |
In 2012, General Norton A. Schwartz decried the "foolishness" of reliance on computer models to arrive at the final design of aircraft before flight testing has found the problems that require changes in design. In 2013, JSF project team leader, USAF Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, said that "A large amount of concurrency, that is, beginning production long before your design is stable and long before you've found problems in test, creates downstream issues where now you have to go back and retrofit airplanes and make sure the production line has those fixes in them. And that drives complexity and cost". Bogdan remarked on the improvement in the program ever since Lockheed Martin was forced to assume some of the financial risks. In 2012, in order to avoid further delays that would result from design changes, the U.S. DoD accepted a reduced combat radius for the F-35A and a longer takeoff run for the F-35B. As a result, the F-35B's estimated combat radius was reduced by 15 percent. In a meeting in Sydney, Australia in March 2012, the United States pledged to eight partner nations that there would be no more program delays. In May 2012, Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Bob Stevens complained that the Defense Department's requirements for cost data were themselves driving up program costs. Stevens also said that a strike by union employees might result in failure to meet that year's production target of 29 F-35s. Striking workers questioned the quality of work done by temporary replacements, noting that even their own work had been cited for "inattention to production quality", resulting in a 16% rework rate. The workers went on strike to protect pensions, the cost of which had been the subject of negotiations with the Department of Defense over orders for the next batch of aircraft. These same pension costs were cited by Fitch in their downgrade of the outlook for Lockheed Martin's stock price. Stevens said that while he hoped to bring down program costs, the industrial base was not capable of meeting the government's cost expectations, given the current number of aircraft on order.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54719700
| 1,015,099 |
1,324,298 |
STS-72, the 74th flight of the Space Shuttle program and the 10th of the orbiter "Endeavour" was launched at 4:41AM EST 11 January 1996 after a brief hold at the T-5-minute mark due to communication issues. The nighttime launch window was in support of the mission's primary objective, the capture and return to Earth of a Japanese microgravity research spacecraft known as Space Flyer Unit (SFU). The SFU was launched by Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on 18 March 1995 aboard a Japanese H-II rocket (HII-3), and spent ten months in orbit conducting automated research in materials science, biology, engineering, and astronomy. Mission Specialist Koichi Wakata operated the orbiter's remote manipulator system arm on flight day three to pluck SFU from orbit. Both of the satellites's solar arrays had to be jettisoned prior to retrieval when sensors indicated improper latching following their retraction. This jettison procedure had been incorporated in preflight training as a contingency in the event of such an occurrence. The canisters housing the arrays were jettisoned 12 minutes apart as "Endeavour" and the SFU traveled across Africa on the thirtieth orbit of the mission. The contingency procedure delayed the capture of the satellite by about an hour and half. Once in "Endeavour"'s payload bay, the satellite's internal batteries were bypassed following connection of a remotely operated electrical cable to the side of the satellite. On this mission, Daniel T. Barry and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata were the first people to play Go in space; for this achievement, both Barry and Wakata received the honorary awards of Ni Dan rank by the Nihon Kiin making Barry one of only four Western Go players to receive such an award. Barry and Wakata used a special Go set, which was named Go Space, designed by Wai-Cheung Willson Chow.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=526878
| 1,323,572 |
1,799,693 |
Liquid crystals made of rod-like molecules had been discovered in 1888, and many compounds had been synthesized at Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany in the 1920s and 30s. Some physical studies had been undertaken by the German and Russian schools during that era, but the subject later languished till the mid-fifties. Starting in the late fifties, the systematic synthetic effort by George William Gray in the UK and the physical studies by Wilhelm Maier in Germany (including the well-known Maier–Saupe or MS theory) started a revival of the subject. Chandrasekhar and his co-workers made contributions to the application of the dynamical theory of reflections to study the fascinating optical properties of cholesteric liquid crystals which have a helical structure with a pitch which is usually ~ 0.5 mm, and to the extensions of the molecular theory of nematic liquid crystals beyond the MS model. Chandrasekhar was invited to establish a liquid crystal laboratory in RRI after the Department of Science and Technology started supporting it in 1971. The move had a highly positive impact on his productivity. Along with a couple of former students who moved with him to RRI, in a short time, he developed a laboratory with all the essential facilities needed for research in the chosen area. Realizing that cutting-edge research would not be possible without an in-house capacity to produce new materials, a synthetic organic chemistry laboratory was set up. Soon many new experimental and a few theoretical results emerged and the Liquid Crystal Laboratory at RRI became one of the leading centres of research in the world. The twisted nematic liquid crystal display was invented in Europe in 1971 and recently, LCDs have displaced CRTs as commercially the most important displays. In cooperation with Chandrasekhar and his colleagues, the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore, developed indigenous know-how for the manufacture of simple LCDs for the domestic market.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20572527
| 1,798,684 |
937,328 |
Work on the Ju 287 programme, along with all other pending German bomber projects (including Junkers' other ongoing heavy bomber design, the piston-engined Ju 488) came to a halt in July 1944, but Junkers was allowed to go forward with the flight testing regime on the V1 prototype. The components for the Junkers Ju 287 V2 had been completed by that time, and were shipped to Brandis for final assembly. Seventeen test flights were undertaken in total, which passed without notable incident. Minor problems, however, did arise with the turbojet engines and the equally-experimental HWK 109-501 higher-thrust (14.71 kN apiece) bipropellant "Starthilfe" RATO booster units, which proved to be unreliable over sustained periods. This initial test phase was designed purely to assess the low-speed handling qualities of the forward-swept wing, but despite this the V1 was dived at full jet power on at least one occasion, attaining a speed in the medium dive-angle employed of 660 km/h. To gain data on airflow patterns, small woolen tufts were glued to the airframe and the "behavior" of these tufts during flight was captured by a cine camera mounted on a sturdy tripod directly ahead of the plane's tailfin. After the seventeenth and last flight in late autumn of 1944, the V1 was transferred to the Luftwaffe's primary "Erprobungsstelle" evaluation and test centre at Rechlin", for flow tests. However, in March 1945, for unknown reasons, the Ju 287 program was restarted, with the RLM issuing a requirement for mass production of the jet bomber (100 airframes a month) as soon as possible.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=456631
| 936,830 |
1,604,899 |
The newly formed Data Science and Supercomputing Division (DSSD), is proposed to grow with two objectives. One is to build on its rich expertise of providing CSIR centralized cyber infrastructure and research in cyber security & privacy. Some of the notable achievements are (i) hosting one of the largest supercomputing facility (ii) receiving largest industry donation (about Rs. 15cr) from AMD Inc. to host a super computing system exclusive for COVID19 research (iii) cyber security test bed which gave first time demonstration of malicious attacks and also led to development / experimental deployment of Darknet (iv) next generation Internet Protocol engineering (v) AI based lightweight security algorithms for connected vehicles which is still a futuristic proposition in India. The team has several patents and high impact publications to their credit. The plan is to strengthen them further with applications of strategic and societal importance using data driven approaches. The second objective is to expand the capacity to implement data science research, industry collaborations and the availability of cutting-edge computational tools in a domain agnostic manner. Few activities were initiated recently to develop framework for deep learning based time series analysis with the help of in-house domain expertise in earth sciences. However, the long term objective is to make this activity a horizontal cutting across all the theme verticals of CSIR, by expanding the team by recruiting more trained manpower.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32288518
| 1,603,998 |
750,024 |
However, the problem with submarine crewing continued; by 2008 the RAN could provide complete companies for only three of the six submarines. A review by Rear Admiral Rowan Moffitt during 2008 (the "Submarine Workforce Sustainability Review" or "Moffitt Report") found that poor leadership and a culture of "mission achievement at almost any cost" resulted in submariners who were regularly stressed and fatigued from working for up to 22 hours in a stretch, under conditions worse than those experienced by the Special Air Service during the Afghanistan conflict. Submariners were also found to have lower morale and job satisfaction levels than any other position in the RAN, with these factors combining to cause a high rate of personnel burnout, while resignations meant that the average experience level in those remaining decreased. The report, publicly released in April 2009, made 29 recommendations to improve conditions and stabilise or increase submariner numbers; all of which the RAN agreed to adopt. These measures included increasing each boat's complement to 58 to spread workload (a practice successfully employed aboard "Farncomb" since December 2008), reducing the length of patrols and increasing shore leave, paying bonuses for submariners who remain in the submarine service for at least eighteen months, and providing internet access aboard the submarines. A dedicated recruiting program was also suggested, promoting the submarine service as an elite unit, and targeting RAN personnel aboard surface ships, former submariners whose civilian jobs may have been affected by the global financial crisis, and submariners in foreign navies. The program was successful; by June 2010, three expanded ship's companies were active, while a fourth was undergoing training. By December 2012, the fourth company was active, and was preparing to bring a submarine out of deep maintenance in 2013.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=810758
| 749,626 |
1,706,377 |
In 2013-2014, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) designed their own "NYC Macroscope", a surveillance system for electronic health records of New York City residents, designed to "measure health outcomes among the NYC adult population actively seeking medical care". The Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing also runs a mapping outreach program via its Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center entitled "Places and Spaces: Mapping Sciences" which in its 2016 program included "eight interactive macroscopes", accompanied by the following definition: "Macroscopes are software tools that help people focus on patterns in data that are too large or complex to see unaided. The world is a complex place, and macroscopes help us understand and manage that complexity. They are visual lenses we can use to see patterns and trends in large volumes of data." Another initiative that has been referred to as a "macroscope" is the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), as described by Vanden Berghe "et al". in 2012, who wrote: "Its ambition to become a 'Macroscope' (de Rosnay, 1979) for marine biodiversity will allow us to see past complexities and the idiosyncrasies of individual datasets to see the "big picture" of ocean life more clearly", a key activity for this project being the transformation of data existing previously in disparate, and sometimes inaccessible forms into a single, standardized format for ease of access and the production of summary information as desired.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64208794
| 1,705,419 |
1,794,057 |
Biosensors & Bioelectronics is the principal international journal devoted to research, design, development, and application of biosensors and bioelectronics. It is an interdisciplinary journal serving professionals with an interest in the exploitation of biological materials in novel diagnostic and electronic devices. Biosensors are defined as analytical devices incorporating a biological material (e.g. tissue, microorganisms, organelles, cell receptors, enzymes, antibodies, nucleic acids, etc.), a biologically derived material, or a biomimetic intimately associated with or integrated within a physicochemical transducer or transducing microsystem, which may be optical, electrochemical, thermometric, piezoelectric or magnetic. Biosensors usually yield a digital electronic signal which is proportional to the concentration of a specific analyte or group of analytes. While the signal may in principle be continuous, devices can be configured to yield single measurements to meet specific market requirements. Biosensors have been applied to a wide variety of analytical problems including in medicine, the environment, food, process industries, security, and defense. The emerging field of Bioelectronics seeks to exploit biology in conjunction with electronics in a wider context encompassing, for example, biomaterials for information processing, information storage, and actuators. A key aspect is an interface between biological materials and electronics. While endeavoring to maintain coherence in the scope of the journal, the editors will accept reviews and papers of obvious relevance to the community, which describe important new concepts, underpin an understanding of the field or provide important insights into the practical application of biosensors and bioelectronics.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38848434
| 1,793,048 |
682,764 |
For Luria, the war with Germany that ended in 1945 resulted in a number of significant developments for the future of his career in neuropsychology. He was appointed Doctor of Medical Sciences in 1943 and Professor in 1944. Of specific importance for Luria was that he was assigned by the government to care for nearly 800 hospitalized patients with traumatic brain injury caused by the war. Luria's treatment methods dealt with a wide range of emotional and intellectual dysfunctions. He kept meticulous notes on these patients, and discerned from them three possibilities for functional recovery: "(1) disinhibition of a temporarily blocked function; (2) involvement of the vicarious potential of the opposite hemisphere; and (3) reorganization of the function system", which he described in a book titled "Functional Recovery From Military Brain Wounds", (Moscow, 1948, Russian only.) A second book titled "Traumatic Aphasia" was written in 1947 in which "Luria formulated an original conception of the neural organization of speech and its disorders (aphasias) that differed significantly from the existing western conceptions about aphasia." Soon after the end of the war, Luria was assigned a permanent position in General Psychology at the central Moscow State University in General Psychology, where he would predominantly stay for the remainder of his life; he was instrumental in the foundation of the Faculty of Psychology, and later headed the Departments of Patho- and Neuropsychology. By 1946, his father, the chief of the gastroenterological clinics at Botkin Hospital, had died of stomach cancer. His mother survived several more years, dying in 1950.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=389738
| 682,408 |
340,746 |
In 1987, astronomer David Jewitt, then at MIT, became increasingly puzzled by "the apparent emptiness of the outer Solar System". He encouraged then-graduate student Jane Luu to aid him in his endeavour to locate another object beyond Pluto's orbit, because, as he told her, "If we don't, nobody will." Using telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Jewitt and Luu conducted their search in much the same way as Clyde Tombaugh and Charles Kowal had, with a blink comparator. Initially, examination of each pair of plates took about eight hours, but the process was sped up with the arrival of electronic charge-coupled devices or CCDs, which, though their field of view was narrower, were not only more efficient at collecting light (they retained 90% of the light that hit them, rather than the 10% achieved by photographs) but allowed the blinking process to be done virtually, on a computer screen. Today, CCDs form the basis for most astronomical detectors. In 1988, Jewitt moved to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Luu later joined him to work at the University of Hawaii's 2.24 m telescope at Mauna Kea. Eventually, the field of view for CCDs had increased to 1024 by 1024 pixels, which allowed searches to be conducted far more rapidly. Finally, after five years of searching, Jewitt and Luu announced on 30 August 1992 the "Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object 1992 QB". This object would later be named 15760 Albion. Six months later, they discovered a second object in the region, (181708) 1993 FW. By 2018, over 2000 Kuiper belts objects had been discovered.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16796
| 340,565 |
868,347 |
The South Georgia boat party could expect to meet hurricane-force winds and waves—the notorious Cape Horn Rollers—measuring from trough to crest as much as . Shackleton therefore selected the heaviest and strongest of the three boats, the long "James Caird". It had been built as a whaleboat in London to Worsley's orders, designed on the "double-ended" principle pioneered by Norwegian shipbuilder Colin Archer. Knowing that a heavily-laden open sea voyage was now unavoidable, Shackleton had already asked the expedition's carpenter, Harry McNish to modify the boats during the weeks the expedition spent at Patience Camp. Using material taken from "Endurance's" fourth boat, a small motor launch which had been broken up with this purpose in mind before the ship's final loss, McNish had raised the sides of the "James Caird" and the "Dudley Docker" by 8–10 inches (20–25 cm). Now in the primitive camp on Elephant Island, McNish was again asked if he could make the "James Caird" more seaworthy. Using improvised tools and materials, McNish built a makeshift deck of wood and canvas, sealing his work with oil paints, lamp wick, and seal blood. The craft was strengthened by having the mast of the "Dudley Docker" lashed inside, along the length of her keel. She was then fitted as a ketch, with her own mainmast and a mizzenmast made by cutting down the mainmast from the "Stancomb-Wills", rigged to carry lug sails and a jib. The weight of the boat was increased by the addition of approximately 1 long ton (1 tonne) of ballast, to lessen the risk of capsizing in the high seas that Shackleton knew they would encounter. Worsley believed that too much extra ballast (formed from rocks, stones and shingle taken from the beach) was added, making the boat excessively heavy, giving an extremely uncomfortable 'stiff' motion and hampering the performance for sailing upwind or into the weather. However he acknowledged that Shackleton's biggest concern was preventing the boat capsizing during the open-ocean crossing.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1048994
| 867,887 |
1,326,694 |
In the field of statistics and applied probability, John Graunt published "Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality" also in 1662, initiating the discipline of demography. This work, among other things, gave a statistical estimate of the population of London, produced the first life table, gave probabilities of survival of different age groups, examined the different causes of death, noting that the annual rate of suicide and accident is constant, and commented on the level and stability of sex ratio. The usefulness and interpretation of Graunt's tables were discussed in a series of correspondences by brothers Ludwig and Christiaan Huygens in 1667, where they realized the difference between mean and median estimates and Christian even interpolated Graunt's life table by a smooth curve, creating the first continuous probability distribution; but their correspondences were not published. Later, Johan de Witt, the then prime minister of the Dutch Republic, published similar material in his 1671 work "Waerdye van Lyf-Renten" (A Treatise on Life Annuities), which used statistical concepts to determine life expectancy for practical political purposes; a demonstration of the fact that this sapling branch of mathematics had significant pragmatic applications. De Witt's work was not widely distributed beyond the Dutch Republic, perhaps due to his fall from power and execution by mob in 1672. Apart from the practical contributions of these two work, they also exposed a fundamental idea that probability can be assigned to events that do not have inherent physical symmetry, such as the chances of dying at certain age, unlike say the rolling of a dice or flipping of a coin, simply by counting the frequency of occurrence. Thus, probability could be more than mere combinatorics.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17554277
| 1,325,967 |
962,408 |
The new aircraft was a minimum change derivative of the T-2, with the rear cockpit being converted to an avionics bay by removing the rear seat, and replacing the canopy with a simple unglazed access hatch. Two additional hardpoints were fitted under the wing to allow carriage of a heavier weapon load, and the avionics were improved, with a new J/AWG-12 radar set, similar to the AN/AWG-12 fitted in British Royal Air Force F-4M Phantom fighter jets. This set provides ranging information. Aside from the avionics changes, deletion of the rear seat, and new one-piece canopy, the only other major change from the T-2 was the strengthening of the airframe to enable it to carry a larger weapons load than the T-2. The F-1 is fitted with an internally mounted 20 mm JM61A1 Vulcan cannon with 750 rounds of ammunition. The aircraft also has seven external hardpoints for the carriage of a wide variety of stores (missiles, gun pods, etc.). The fuselage hardpoint and inboard pair of underwing hardpoints are plumbed for external fuel tanks to increase the aircraft's range. The primary weapon of the F-1 is the ASM-1 and the newer ASM-2 long-range anti-ship missile. This weapon is roughly in the class of the American AGM-84 Harpoon or French AM.39 Exocet. Other weapons carried include the all-aspect short-range heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile for air-to-air combat. This weapon is carried on the wingtip rails usually, but it can also be carried on the outboard underwing hardpoints for the F-1's secondary air defense role. Other air-to-ground weapons carried include rocket pods (JLAU-3/A) of 70 mm (2.75 in) size as well as bombs of 227 kg (500 lb) and 340 kg (750 lb) in size (Mk82 and M117 respectively). In addition, the Mk-82 and M117 bombs can be fitted with infrared guidance kits, turning them into precision-guided weapons that home in on heat radiation emitted from seaborne targets such as ships or other ground-based targets. When fitted with this kit, the bomb becomes known as GCS-1.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2050929
| 961,899 |
13,140 |
In March 2014, numerous news sources, including NBC, began predicting that the radioactive underwater plume traveling through the Pacific Ocean would reach the western seaboard of the continental United States. The common story was that the amount of radioactivity would be harmless and temporary once it arrived. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measured caesium-134 at points in the Pacific Ocean and models were cited in predictions by several government agencies to announce that the radiation would not be a health hazard for North American residents. Groups, including Beyond Nuclear and the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership, challenged these predictions on the basis of continued isotope releases after 2011, leading to a demand for more recent and comprehensive measurements as the radioactivity made its way east. These measurements were taken by a cooperative group of organizations under the guidance of a marine chemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and revealed that total radiation levels, of which only a fraction bore the fingerprint of Fukushima, were not high enough to pose any direct risk to human life and in fact were far less than Environmental Protection Agency guidelines or several other sources of radiation exposure deemed safe. Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring project (InFORM) also failed to show any significant amount of radiation and as a result its authors received death threats from supporters of a Fukushima-induced "wave of cancer deaths across North America" theory.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31162817
| 13,135 |
834,990 |
In 2000, the school's 50th anniversary, the Board of Trustees changed the name from Bellarmine College to Bellarmine University to reflect its status as a Masters-I university. In 2005, McGowan announced Vision 2020, the university's plan to become "the premier Independent Catholic University in the South, and thereby the leading private institution in the Commonwealth and region." Among other things, the plan calls for tripling enrollment, doubling the number of buildings on campus, and adding schools of architecture, law, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine by 2020. In addition, the possibility of moving the remaining athletic programs to NCAA Division I (joining lacrosse) will be considered. Under McGowan's leadership, a construction, acquisition and renovation boom that continues still today included Our Lady of the Woods Chapel, The President's Residence in Glenview, the 2120 Building, the Norton Health Sciences Center (named in honor of Norton Healthcare support), The Siena Residence Halls complex, Owsley B. Frazier Stadium, Joseph A. and Janet P. Clayton Field, Via Cassia and Ponte Juneja, and the expansion of Miles Hall. Enrollment reached a record 2,881 students by 2009, with more than 700 in residence on the campus, and the average ACT score of entering Bellarmine students reached a record high. Bellarmine launched many new academic programs including The School of Continuing and Professional Studies, the Institute of Media, Culture and Ethics and the School of Communication, The Center for Regional Environmental Studies and Bellarmine Farm.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=394938
| 834,541 |
956,060 |
By the mid-1980s, oil prices had fallen sharply, helping lead to the revitalization of the American auto industry. Under the leadership of Lee Iacocca, Chrysler Corporation mounted a comeback after its flirtation with bankruptcy in 1979. The minivan was introduced in the 1984 model year by Chrysler with the Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan, and proved very popular. These vehicles were built on a passenger-car chassis and seated up to seven people as well as being able to hold bulky loads. Chrysler also introduced their "K-cars" in the 1980s, which came with front-wheel drive and fuel-efficient OHC engines. In 1987, Chrysler bought American Motors Corporation, which produced the Jeep. This proved to be excellent timing to take advantage of the sport utility vehicle boom. Ford also began a comeback after losses of $3.3 billion in the early 1980s. In 1985, the company introduced the very successful, aerodynamic Taurus. General Motors, under the leadership of Roger Smith, was not as successful as its competitors in turning itself around, and its market share fell significantly. While Ford and Chrysler were cutting production costs, GM was investing heavily in new technology. The company's attempts at overhauling its management structure and using increased technology for manufacturing production were not successful. Several large acquisitions (Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft Company) also diverted management attention away from their main industry. (Ford and Chrysler also joined in the acquisition and diversification trend, with Ford buying Jaguar Cars, Aston Martin, The Associates (a finance company), and First Nationwide Financial Corp. (a savings and loan). Chrysler purchased Lamborghini, an interest in Maserati, and Gulfstream Aerospace jets.) GM started the Saturn brand in the late 1980s as a way to retake sales from imported cars. While Saturn initially succeeded, GM later neglected to provide it much support. Around this time GM also began development on the General Motors EV1 electric car, which debuted in 1996.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23576520
| 955,555 |
498,529 |
Meanwhile, Jowett's influence at Oxford had steadily increased; he had his favourites. It culminated when the country clergy, provoked by the final acquittal of the essayists, had voted in convocation against the endowment of the Greek chair. Jowett's pupils, who were now drawn from the university at large, supported him with enthusiasm. He made friends with the Freemantles (related to Gladstone's minister, Grant Duff), and the Verneys at Claydons. On holiday in Derbyshire he would write to them and Florence, describing his findings at Lea Hurst in 1864. One historian has identified his relations with her as being most intense between 1863 and 1866: in April 1864, he had advised Florence Nightingale to prevent Garibaldi, her world-famous guest, from stirring up trouble in Italy. This coincided with a big philosophical argument in which they were poles apart: there were three major pieces of sanitary legislation, the Contagious Diseases Acts, which in 1870 came under fire from Josephine Butler, a feminist and social reformer, who wished their repeal. The rational theologian in Jowett warned Nightingale to ignore those "on the wrong tack". Rising incidents of venereal disease posed a moral question about whether to regulate prostitution, when men still might die from the infection. Policing of the health conditions became a case for which women's rights campaigners demanded repeal, and they launched a vociferous attack in the press on Jowett, amongst others. He was a compassionate man, visiting the selfless Hilary Bonham Carter (dying from cancer) in May 1865, administering his own brand of prayer and kindness. He was a staunch critic of the Poor Laws that condemned the poor, sick, and vulnerable to appalling degradation, leaving people to starve. In London alone in 1866 there were 21,500 patients with no trained nurses. But his influence could be profound. In 1874, he criticised Florence's impending Report of Land Tenure in India to the extent that it was never published, because she "could lose influence".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=231263
| 498,272 |
2,070,901 |
Daniel Gianola (born 1947) is a geneticist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (US), reputed for his contributions in quantitative genetics to the fields of animal and plant breeding. In the early 1980s, Gianola extended best linear unbiased prediction to the non-linear domain for analysis of categorical traits (fertility, survival, resistance to diseases), using the classical threshold model of Sewall Wright. Subsequently, he pioneered the use of Bayesian methodologies and Monte Carlo Markov chain methods in quantitative genetics. He also revived early work by Sewall Wright on structural equation models and cast their application in the context of modern quantitative genetics and statistical methodology. His group in Wisconsin was the first in the world applying non-parametric methods, such as reproducing Kernel Hilbert spaces regression and Bayesian neural networks, to genome-enabled selection in animal breeding, agriculture and whole-genome (i.e., using a massive number of DNA markers) prediction of complex traits or diseases. Gianola published extensively on thresholds models, Bayesian theory, prediction of complex traits using mixed model methodology, hierarchical Bayesian regression procedures and machine learning techniques. Gianola has been also involved in whole-genome prediction of skin and bladder cancer in humans. He has taught extensively in more than twenty countries including recurrent visiting professorships at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), Aarhus University (Denmark), Georg-August University (Germany) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany). He has been an Honorary Researcher at the Pasteur Institut de Montevideo since 2016. In an Editorial contained in a volume published in Gianola's honor in the Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics (2017), it was stated that "He is probably the one lecturer in animal breeding and genetics, who has the biggest impact on the largest number of followers in the numerous classes and courses he has taught with never-ending energy all across the world."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56448818
| 2,069,710 |
309,682 |
Exum's documents revealed that Carl Lewis had tested positive three times at the 1988 Olympics trials for minimum amounts of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, which were banned stimulants. Bronchodilators are also found in cold medication. Due to the rules, his case could have led to disqualification from the Seoul Olympics and suspension from competition for six months. The levels of the combined stimulants registered in the separate tests were 2 ppm, 4 ppm and 6 ppm. Lewis defended himself, claiming that he had accidentally consumed the banned substances. After the supplements that he had taken were analyzed to prove his claims, the USOC accepted his claim of inadvertent use, since a dietary supplement he ingested was found to contain "Ma Huang", the Chinese name for Ephedra (ephedrine is known to help weight loss). Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason. The highest level of the stimulants Lewis recorded was 6 ppm, which was regarded as a positive test in 1988 but is now regarded as negative test. The acceptable level has been raised to ten parts per million for ephedrine and twenty-five parts per million for other substances. According to the IOC rules at the time, positive tests with levels lower than 10 ppm were cause of further investigation but not immediate ban. Neal Benowitz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco who is an expert on ephedrine and other stimulants, agreed that "These [levels] are what you'd see from someone taking cold or allergy medicines and are unlikely to have any effect on performance." Following Exum's revelations the IAAF acknowledged that at the 1988 Olympic Trials the USOC indeed followed the correct procedures in dealing with eight positive findings for ephedrine and ephedrine-related compounds in low concentration. Additionally, in 1988 the federation reviewed the relevant documents with the athletes' names undisclosed and stated that "the medical committee felt satisfied, however, on the basis of the information received that the cases had been properly concluded by the USOC as 'negative cases' in accordance with the rules and regulations in place at the time and no further action was taken".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2112059
| 309,515 |
1,349,453 |
This scheme should eliminate national and disciplinary barriers and provide a most efficient approach to global collaborative research and data sharing. In this new scheme, each country will be expected to fund the participating researchers from their country. The GSF neuroinformatics committee then developed a business plan for the operation, support and establishment of the INCF which was supported and approved by the GSF Science Ministers at its 2004 meeting. In 2006 the INCF was created and its central office established and set into operation at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden under the leadership of Sten Grillner. Sixteen countries (Australia, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States), and the EU Commission established the legal basis for the INCF and Programme in International Neuroinformatics (PIN). To date, eighteen countries (Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) are members of the INCF. Membership is pending for several other countries. The goal of the INCF is to coordinate and promote international activities in neuroinformatics. The INCF contributes to the development and maintenance of database and computational infrastructure and support mechanisms for neuroscience applications. The system is expected to provide access to all freely accessible human brain data and resources to the international research community. The more general task of INCF is to provide conditions for developing convenient and flexible applications for neuroscience laboratories in order to improve our knowledge about the human brain and its disorders.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3062721
| 1,348,707 |
998,026 |
After the routine pre-invasion bombardment, the main landing on Okinawa took place on 1 April. Unlike previous assaults, the marines faced no opposition early in the operation; Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima had withdrawn the bulk of his 100,000-strong army to the southern two-thirds of the island, where hilly terrain favored the defense. And rather than engage in artillery duels with the battleships, his artillery batteries held their fire until the marines had come further inland. His intention was to delay the invasion as long as possible, thereby keeping the invasion fleet pinned in place as long as possible for the kamikazes that had been massed in the Home Islands for this purpose. On 12 April, the Japanese launched a major strike on the fleet. "Tennessee" came under attack by five aircraft diving from high altitude; all were shot down before they could hit the ship, but they diverted attention skyward, which allowed an Aichi D3A "Val" dive-bomber to approach at lower altitude, heading straight for "Tennessee"s bridge. The ship's light anti-aircraft battery opened up on the D3A and damaged it, but not enough to prevent it from crashing into her signal bridge at about 14:50. The impact destroyed a 40 mm mount, fire directors for the 20 mm guns, and hurled burning avgas over the area. The plane carried a bomb that penetrated the deck and exploded. The kamikaze killed 22 and wounded another 107 according to the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships", or killed 25 and wounded 104, according to William Cracknell.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=196975
| 997,508 |
160,654 |
Octreotide has been used experimentally to treat obesity, particularly obesity caused by lesions in the hunger and satiety centers of the hypothalamus, a region of the brain central to the regulation of food intake and energy expenditure. The circuit begins with an area of the hypothalamus, the arcuate nucleus, that has outputs to the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH), the brain's feeding and satiety centers, respectively. The VMH is sometimes injured by ongoing treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or surgery or radiation to treat posterior cranial fossa tumors. With the VMH disabled and no longer responding to peripheral energy balance signals, "Efferent sympathetic activity drops, resulting in malaise and reduced energy expenditure, and vagal activity increases, resulting in increased insulin secretion and adipogenesis." "VMH dysfunction promotes excessive caloric intake and decreased caloric expenditure, leading to continuous and unrelenting weight gain. Attempts at caloric restriction or pharmacotherapy with adrenergic or serotonergic agents have previously met with little or only brief success in treating this syndrome." In this context, octreotide suppresses the excessive release of insulin and may increase its action, thereby inhibiting excessive adipose storage. In a small clinical trial in eighteen pediatric subjects with intractable weight gain following therapy for ALL or brain tumors and other evidence of hypothalamic dysfunction, octreotide reduced body mass index (BMI) and insulin response during glucose tolerance test, while increasing parent-reported physical activity and quality of life (QoL) relative to placebo. In a separate placebo-controlled trial of obese adults without known hypothalamic lesions, obese subjects who received long-acting octreotide lost weight and reduced their BMI compared to subjects receiving placebo; post hoc analysis suggested greater effects in patients receiving the higher dose of the drug, and among "Caucasian subjects having insulin secretion greater than the median of the cohort." "There were no statistically significant changes in QoL scores, body fat, leptin concentration, Beck Depression Inventory, or macronutrient intake", although subjects taking octreotide had higher blood glucose after a glucose tolerance test than those receiving placebo.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1411989
| 160,569 |
2,117,788 |
An experimental device working according to thermogravitational cycle principle was developed in a laboratory of the University of Bordeaux and patented in France. Such thermogravitational electric generator is based on inflation and deflation cycles of an elastic bag made of nitrile elastomer cut from a glove finger. The bag is filled with a volatile working fluid that has low chemical affinity for the elastomer such as perfluorohexane (CF). It is attached to a strong NdFeB spherical magnet that acts both as a weight and for transducing the mechanical energy into voltage. The glass cylinder is filled with water acting as transporting fluid. It is heated at the bottom by a hot circulating water-jacket, and cooled down at the top by a cold water bath. Due to its low boiling point temperature (56 °C), the perfluorohexane drop contained in the bag vaporizes and inflates the balloon. Once its density is lower than the water density, the balloon raises according to Archimedes’ principle. Cooled down at the column top, the balloon deflates partially until its gets effectively denser than water and starts to fall down. As seen from the videos, the cyclic motion has a period of several seconds. These oscillations can last for several hours and their duration is limited only by leaks of the working fluid through the rubbery membrane. Each time the magnet goes through the coil produces a variation in the magnetic flux. An electromotive force is created and detected through an oscilloscope. It has been estimated that the average power of this machine is 7 μW and its efficiency is 4.8 x 10. Although these values are very small, this experiment brings a proof of principle of renewable energy device for harvesting electricity from a weak waste heat source without need of other external energy supply, e.g. for a compressor in a regular heat engine. The experiment was successfully reproduced by undergraduate students in preparatory classes of the Lycée Hoche in Versailles.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63687901
| 2,116,570 |
927,321 |
Originally the project began as a surface to air missile seeker developed by Texas Instruments. When TI executive Glenn E. Penisten attempted to sell the new technology to the Air Force, Col. Joe Davis Jr. inquired if it could instead be used as a ground attack system to overcome problems US aircraft were having with accuracy of bombing in Vietnam. Col. Davis had already witnessed a test of the Army's new laser target designator made by Martin Marietta, but no seeker existed to make use of the system. Davis had already performed tests from the back seat of an F-4 Phantom and proved that it was possible to accurately target objects from a moving aircraft. His mock testing proved correct, and during further testing with live seekers it took just six attempts to improve the seeker accuracy from 148 feet to within 10 feet of the target. This greatly exceeded the design requirements. It was commissioned by the United States Air Force in 1967 and successfully completed a combat evaluation in 1968. The system was sent to Vietnam and performed well. Without the existence of tracking pods the Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) in the back seat of an F-4 Phantom II fighter bomber used a hand-held Airborne Laser Designator to guide the bombs, but half of the LGBs still hit their targets despite the difficulties inherent in keeping the laser on the target. LGBs proved to offer a much higher degree of accuracy than unguided weapons, but without the expense, complexity, and limitations of guided air-to-ground missiles like the AGM-12 Bullpup. The LGB proved particularly effective against difficult fixed targets like bridges, which previously had required huge loads of "dumb" ordnance to destroy.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=306899
| 926,834 |
737,342 |
Both local shipping and long-distance trade are required to meet the resource demands important in maintaining urban areas. Carbon dioxide emissions from the transport of goods also contribute to accumulating greenhouse gasses and nutrient deposits in the soil and air of urban environments. In addition, shipping facilitates the unintentional spread of living organisms, and introduces them to environments that they would not naturally inhabit. Introduced or alien species are populations of organisms living in a range in which they did not naturally evolve due to intentional or inadvertent human activity. Increased transportation between urban centers furthers the incidental movement of animal and plant species. Alien species often have no natural predators and pose a substantial threat to the dynamics of existing ecological populations in the environment into which they are introduced. Invasive species are successful when they are able to have proliferate reproduction due to short life cycles, contain or adapt to have traits that suit the environment and appear in high densities. Such invasive species are numerous and include house sparrows, ring-necked pheasants, European starlings, brown rats, Asian carp, American bullfrogs, emerald ash borer, kudzu vines, and zebra mussels among numerous others, most notably domesticated animals. Brown rats are a highly invasive species in urban environments, and are commonly seen in the streets and subways of New York City, where they pose multiple negative effects to infrastructure, native species and human health. Brown rats carry several types of parasites and pathogens that can possibly infect humans and other animals. In New York City a genetic study exploring genome wide variation concluded that multiple rats were originally from Great Britain. In Australia, it has been found that removing Lantana ("L. camara," an alien species) from urban green spaces can have negative impacts on bird diversity locally, as it provides refugia for species like the superb fairy (Malurus cyaneus) and silvereye (Zosterops lateralis), in the absence of native plant equivalents. Although, there seems to be a density threshold in which too much Lantana (thus homogeneity in vegetation cover) can lead to a decrease in bird species richness or abundance.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=295670
| 736,953 |
479,502 |
Over-time the pre-war uniforms of the militia were replaced with khaki service dress and in 1942 regimental badges were universally replaced by the Rising Sun, with UCPs being the main distinction between troops of the Militia and AIF. Some minor changes to the appearance of the service dress jack occurred mid-war, while cloth anklets were also later by webbing gaiters. Meanwhile, during the course of the war uniform colour was changed to jungle green following the transfer of the bulk of Australian forces from the Middle East to the Pacific to fight against the Japanese in 1942. Troops hastily sent to New Guinea in the early stages of the campaign had to dye a lot of their existing khaki clothing green, although this tended to run in the heavy tropical rain. The British steel Brodie helmet continued to be used, including the Mark II model of 1940 and the Mark III model from 1944. Steel helmets were unpopular with the soldiers in the jungle climate. Some items of American equipment were adopted, such as long canvas gaiters. Eventually a range of equipment suitable for jungle conditions was specifically developed in order to meet the requirements of providing both suitable camouflage, as well protection against the mosquitos, fungal growth / mould, and mud prevalent in the tropical environment. This included studded boots, canvas gaiters, and cloth berets, in addition to other items of personal equipment. The establishment of a number of women's services by the Army during the war resulted in the development of a number of distinct uniforms, although these were mostly similar in colour and style to the uniform of the male services, including the wearing of trousers when in the field. Despite this the Australian Army Nursing Service opted to retain the grey serge that had been worn by nurses since before the previous war.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51440630
| 479,262 |
32,141 |
Gian-Carlo Rota wrote in his famously controversial book, "Indiscrete Thoughts", that von Neumann was a lonely man who had trouble relating to others except on a strictly formal level. Françoise Ulam described how she never saw von Neumann in anything but a formal suit and tie. His daughter wrote in her memoirs that she believed her father was motivated by two key convictions, one, that every person had the responsibility to make full use of their intellectual capacity, and two, that there is a critical importance of an environment of political freedom in order to pursue the first conviction. She added that he "enjoyed the good life, liked to live well, and counted a number of celebrities among his friends and colleagues". He was also very concerned with his legacy, in two aspects, the first being the durability of his intellectual contributions to the world, and secondly the life of his daughter. His brother, Nicholas noted that John tended to take a statistical view of the world, and that characterized many of his views. His encyclopedic knowledge of history did not help him in this point of view, nor did his work in game theory. He often liked to discuss the future in world events and politics and compare them with events in the past, predicting in 1936 that war would break out in Europe and that the French army was weak and would not matter in any conflict. On the other hand, Stan Ulam described his warmth this way, "Quite independently of his liking for abstract wit, he had a strong appreciation (one might say almost a hunger) for the more earthy type of comedy and humor". He delighted in gossip and dirty jokes. Conversations with friends on scientific topics could go on for hours without respite, never being a shortage of things to discuss, even when leaving von Neumann's specialty in mathematics. He would mix in casual jokes, anecdotes and observations of people into his conversations, which allowed him to release any tension or wariness if there were disagreements, especially on questions of politics. Von Neumann was not a quiet person either; he enjoyed going to and hosting parties several times a week, Churchill Eisenhart recalls in an interview that von Neumann could attend parties until the early hours of the morning, then the next day right at 8:30 could be there on time and deliver clear, lucid lectures. Graduate students would try to copy von Neumann in his ways; however, they did not have any success.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15942
| 32,129 |
158,473 |
While modernization of electrical grids into smart grids allows for optimization of everyday processes, a smart grid, being online, can be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Transformers which increase the voltage of electricity created at power plants for long-distance travel, transmission lines themselves, and distribution lines which deliver the electricity to its consumers are particularly susceptible. These systems rely on sensors which gather information from the field and then deliver it to control centers, where algorithms automate analysis and decision-making processes. These decisions are sent back to the field, where existing equipment execute them. Hackers have the potential to disrupt these automated control systems, severing the channels which allow generated electricity to be utilized. This is called a denial of service or DoS attack. They can also launch integrity attacks which corrupt information being transmitted along the system as well as desynchronization attacks which affect when such information is delivered to the appropriate location. Additionally, intruders can again access via renewable energy generation systems and smart meters connected to the grid, taking advantage of more specialized weaknesses or ones whose security has not been prioritized. Because a smart grid has a large number of access points, like smart meters, defending all of its weak points can prove difficult. There is also concern on the security of the infrastructure, primarily that involving communications technology. Concerns chiefly center around the communications technology at the heart of the smart grid. Designed to allow real-time contact between utilities and meters in customers' homes and businesses, there is a risk that these capabilities could be exploited for criminal or even terrorist actions. One of the key capabilities of this connectivity is the ability to remotely switch off power supplies, enabling utilities to quickly and easily cease or modify supplies to customers who default on payment. This is undoubtedly a massive boon for energy providers, but also raises some significant security issues. Cybercriminals have infiltrated the U.S. electric grid before on numerous occasions. Aside from computer infiltration, there are also concerns that computer malware like Stuxnet, which targeted SCADA systems which are widely used in industry, could be used to attack a smart grid network.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13201685
| 158,392 |
1,027,563 |
In the following months, the two railway companies ran comparative exchange trials between the two types from which the Great Western emerged triumphant with 4079 "Pendennis Castle". The LNER learned valuable lessons from the trials which resulted in a series of modifications carried out from 1926 on number 4477 "Gay Crusader". Changes to the valve gear included increased lap and longer travel, in accordance with Great Western practice; this allowed fuller exploitation of the expansive properties of steam and reduced back pressure from the exhaust, transforming performance and economy; the economies in coal and water consumption achieved were such that the 180 psi Pacifics could undertake long-distance non-stop runs that had previously been impossible. There followed a complete redesign of the valve gear, which was applied to 2555 "Centenary" in 1927, with the rest of the class being modified in due course. Locomotives with modified valve gear had a slightly raised running plate over the cylinders in order to give room for the longer combination lever necessary for the longer valve travel. Another modification was made in 1927 when number 4480 "Enterprise" was fitted with a boiler. This was closely followed by two other locomotives which also incorporated variations in the cylinder diameter and superheater size for comparative purposes. This led Gresley to make a radical departure from Churchward practice by increasing the number of large tubes containing superheating elements, hence increasing the superheater surface area in contact with the hot gases, thus raising steam temperature. The presence of the larger superheater could be recognised from the square covers on either side of the smokebox, a feature that the locomotives retained throughout the rest of their existence.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2534748
| 1,027,029 |
638,578 |
In September 2003, Laurentian began offering an English Bachelor of Education. This concurrent B.Ed. is a five-year program taken at the same time — concurrently — with an undergraduate degree commonly in Arts, Sciences or Sport and Physical Education. The primary goal of the English-language Bachelor of Education program is to foster the development of a new generation of reflective educators who employ holistic teaching approaches. The curriculum features an emphasis on equity and diversity as well as the infusion of aboriginal issues and content. At the moment, the program is offered in just two of the three areas of potential concentration: the primary/junior and junior/intermediate divisions. A new School of Education building - based on sustainable environmental principles and located across from L'École des sciences at the east end of the campus – was completed in the summer of 2008. The program requires a 75% average over one's first four years in order to progress to the final (or Pro Year). The 75% minimum average required for entry in the final year means a nearly 80% entering grade in reality, so the annual Pro Year class (ranging from about 65 to 95 students) constitutes a rather elite cohort compared to most other Ontario concurrent programs. Many graduates have gone on to employment with both the local Sudbury boards, with other school boards across Ontario, while many others have acquired employment in Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan, with a significant number working overseas (particularly in Britain).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=342020
| 638,239 |
774,064 |
Evolutionary biologist Hakhamanesh Mostafavi led a 2017 study that analyzed data of 215,000 individuals from just a few generations in the United Kingdom and the United States and found a number of genetic changes that affect longevity. The ApoE allele linked to Alzheimer's disease was rare among women aged 70 and over while the frequency of the CHRNA3 gene associated with smoking addiction among men fell among middle-aged men and up. Because this is not itself evidence of evolution, since natural selection only cares about successful reproduction not longevity, scientists have proposed a number of explanations. Men who live longer tend to have more children. Men and women who survive until old age can help take care of both their children and grandchildren, in benefits their descendants down the generations. This explanation is known as the grandmother hypothesis. It is also possible that Alzheimer's disease and smoking addiction are also harmful earlier in life, but the effects are more subtle and larger sample sizes are required in order to study them. Mostafavi and his team also found that mutations causing health problems such as asthma, having a high body-mass index and high cholesterol levels were more common among those with shorter lifespans while mutations leading to delayed puberty and reproduction were more common among long living individuals. According to geneticist Jonathan Pritchard, while the link between fertility and longevity was identified in previous studies, those did not entirely rule out the effects of educational and financial status—people who rank high in both tend to have children later in life; this seems to suggest the existence of an evolutionary trade-off between longevity and fertility.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54472601
| 773,648 |
152,842 |
In 1973 a further refined and even stronger but less powerful version, the Super Duty (SD) engine, was planned for Firebird, Grand Am, Le Mans (GTO), and Grand Prix models. The SD-455 used round-port cylinder heads similar to those used on the 1971 and 1972 455 HO, with specific "LS-2" intake and cast-iron exhaust header manifolds. Still, it was the strongest American engine offered that year. Pontiac's initial plans were to use a camshaft with specs identical to the 041 Ram Air IV camshaft, but testing showed emissions, while technically compliant, did not have "cushion" to satisfy Pontiac's emissions engineers, to avoid production variation leading to any non-compliant engines being produced and sold. Though a change of camshaft would delay production, Pontiac decided to change camshaft, employing one with identical timing to the 744 camshaft, which had been used in the 400 Ram Air(aka Ram Air III) engine with manual transmissions. As a result, peak horsepower dropped from 310 to 290, though torque increased from 390 to 395 lb. ft. After the SD-455 was certified with the new cam, it was production-ready but was then further delayed by the EPA mandating Pontiac recertify all of its engines when the EPA discovered that part-throttle emissions exceeded the limits. Thus in March 1973 Pontiac eliminated a timing solenoid that gave full vacuum advance and disabled the EGR valve in high gear after a period of time that happened to exceed the running time of the EPA testing cycle. Once corrected the SD-455 was recertified and was released for production in late April 1973. Given how late in the model year it was, Pontiac decided not to incur the costs of recertifying the SD-455 for other models other than the Firebird. Ultimately Pontiac produced only 295 1973 SD-455 Firebirds (252 Trans Am, 43 Formula). For 1974 another 1,001 (943 Trans Am, 58 Formula) were built, after which the SD-455 was discontinued.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=880258
| 152,774 |
1,184,604 |
On January 24 (February 5), 1821, on the South Shetland Islands, 42-year-old Bellingshausen met with 21-year old Nathaniel Palmer who was at that time the head of local industrial sealers. As it turned out to be in the 20th century, this meeting was fateful. As later Bulkeley noted, it was similar to a rendezvous of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin. Since original diaries and travel journals of "Vostok" had not been preserved, Bellingshausen's own evidence of a meeting with Palmer is on the 14th sheet of the report. On January 24, the sloop was in the strait between the islands Livingston and Deception. According to Bellingshausen's description, the conversation was about fur seals' fishing prospects and anchors of Theil Island: "the strait in which we saw eight anchored vessels, was closed from all winds, has a depth of seventeen fathoms, soil – liquid sludge; from the quality of this soil ships often drift even from two anchors. Two English and one American vessel got torn from anchors and wrecked". In his diary, Novosilsky especially emphasized that Bellingshausen and Palmer did not talk about anything else. In the original of "Dvukratnykh izyskanii" (1831), Palmer's second name was misspelt as "Palmor", which was presumably a consequence of literary editing. On the contrary, Palmer's original journal (and others' sealers) is stored at the Library of Congress. In later American descriptions of the second half of the 19th century, Palmer was mentioned as the discoverer of Antarctica, which was primarily based on his own memoirs of 1876. At the same time, a highly controversial question was the exchange of information between Bellingshausen and Palmer. Frank Debenham suggested that Bellingshausen found out about the existence of the Southern continent from Palmer, but did not fully understand him due to the lack of knowledge of English language. Then, American researchers cast doubt on Palmer's memoirs, since Bellingshausen had a legal agreement to research Southern continent, and could not help but try to verify the information received from the industrialist. Palmer was not a good cartographer or navigator, and his claims on the meeting on the Deception islands are refuted by the Bellingshausen's report card, on which there are no signs of caldera.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40880361
| 1,183,976 |
2,197,543 |
The use of microbial cells to produce electricity was perceived by M.C. Potter in 1911 with the finding that ""The disintegration of organic compounds by microorganisms is accompanied by the liberation of electrical energy"". A noteworthy addition in MFC research was made by B. Cohen in 1931, when microbial half fuel cells stack connected in series was created, capable of producing over 35 V with a current of 0.2 mA. Two breakthroughs were made in the late 1980s when two of the first known bacteria capable of transporting electron from the cell interior to the extracellular metal oxides without artificial redox mediators: "Shewanella" (formerly "Alteromonas") "oneidensis" MR-1 and "Geobacter sulfurreducens" PCA were isolated. In late 90s, Kim "et al". showed that the Fe(III)-reducing bacterium, "S. oneidensis" MR-1 was electrochemically active and can generate electricity in a MFC without any added electron mediators. These findings set basis for the development of electromicrobiology, and the field of MFC started. However, due to low power generation, it was also doubtful whether the MFC can be practical application on wastewater organics reduction. This view was changed when it was established that domestic wastewater could be treated to practical limits while simultaneously producing power. Furthermore, power densities two orders of magnitude higher was demonstrated in an MFC using glucose, without the need for exogenous chemical mediators. Building upon these works, a race to develop practical applications of MFCs initiated to emerge at a very fast pace, with the major goals being development of a large scale technology for the treatment of domestic, industrial, and other types of wastewaters.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=71759039
| 2,196,292 |
32,132 |
Once Schriever had finished speaking on the cost of the project he wrapped up and Eisenhower thanked all three men for their presentations. Of them he said, "This has been most impressive, most impressive! There is no question this weapon will have a profound impact on all aspects of human life, not only in the United States but in every corner of the globe—military, sociological, political.” Immediately he asked Admiral Radford to find out what effect the long range missiles would have on the force structure and report back to him. The others in attendance likewise thanked each of the men and left despite being more than an hour overtime. Nixon and the head of the CIA stayed and questioned why this had not been done earlier and what was the hold up. Later that day the trio would once again repeat their briefings to the NSC Planning Board. The board would then physically write the directive for the President to sign. However the board was mostly made up of DoD staffers who did not believe in the project as strongly as Gardner or Schriever. Luckily by now Vice President Nixon had been won over and when he chaired a full NSC meeting that would decide the issue on September 8 he personally invited von Neumann to give another presentation. The result was NSC Action No. 1433, a presidential directive signed by Eisenhower on September 13, 1955. It stated that "there would be the gravest repercussions on the national security and on the cohesion of the free world” if the Soviet Union developed the ICBM before America did and therefore designated the ICBM project "a research and development program of the highest priority above all others.” The Secretary of Defense was ordered to commence the project with "maximum urgency". From the first time Schriever heard the presentation of von Neumann and Teller to the signing of the presidential directive the trio had moved heaven and earth in order to make the ICBM program a reality. Evidence would later show that the Soviets indeed were already testing their own intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the time of the presentation to President Eisenhower at the White House. Von Neumann would continue to meet the President, including at his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and other high-level government officials as a key advisor on ICBMs until his death.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15942
| 32,120 |
1,881,410 |
While the changing climates keep these fungi from spreading, they also illustrate essential points. There is a greater degree of phylogenetic similarities between fungal communities at similar latitudes and they exhibit just as much similarity between themselves as do plant communities. Tracking one species of plant will help narrow down the specific movement of the mycorrhizae that are commonly associated with the plant species. Alaskan trees for example tend to move north as climate changes because tundra regions are becoming more hospitable and allows for these trees to grow there. Mycorrhizae will follow but which ones in specific is difficult to measure. While vegetation above ground is easier to see and varies less over a larger region, soil contents vary widely within a much smaller region. This makes it difficult to pinpoint exact movements of particular fungi which may be in competition with one another, however these Alaskan trees have obligate endomycorrhizal symbiotes in great quantities, so accounting for their movement is easier. The measurements showed that there were varying distributions of not only the ectomycorrhizal fungi in trees, but the ericoid mycorrhizae, orchid mychorrhize, and arbuscular mycorrhizae in shrubs and fruit plants. They found that of the measurable ectomycorrhizal species richness and density, "– the colonization of seedlings declines with increased distance from forest edge for both native and invasive tree species across fine spatial scales." Thus, the greatest inhibitor of forest expansion is actually the mycorrhizae that prioritize a host's growth rather than their establishment (planting of the seed). The nutrients in the soil cannot sustain the complete growth of a tree within the perimeters of the amount of nutrient absorption that a mycorrhizae (that focuses on growth rather than establishment) will allow. The mycorrhizae which help a plant's establishment will aid the species (and in turn themselves) the most, by maintaining a healthy and balanced intake of nutrients. Species that are moving away from the equator due to change in climate likely experience the best benefits when establishing mycorrhizae infect their roots and spread to other offspring.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59393212
| 1,880,329 |
1,996,460 |
Today, Michigan State continues its research with facilities such as the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory and a particle accelerator called the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB)—a $730M scientific user facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, MSU, and the State of Michigan—will advance nuclear physics and provide research opportunities for scientists and students from around the globe. FRIB is expected to be fully operational in 2022 and is ahead of schedule. In 2004, scientists at the Cyclotron produced and observed a new isotope of the element germanium, called Ge-60. In 2004, Michigan State, in consortium with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the government of Brazil, broke ground on the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) in the Andes Mountains of Chile. The consortium telescope will allow the Physics & Astronomy department to study galaxy formation and origins. Since 1999, MSU has been part of another consortium called the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor, which aims to develop biotechnology research in the State of Michigan. The College of Communication Arts and Sciences' Quello Center researches current issues of information and communication management. Avida, an artificial life software platform to study the evolutionary biology of self-replicating and evolving computer programs, is under active development by Charles Ofria in the Digital Evolution Lab of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Albert Fert, an Adjunct professor at MSU, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg. In February 2010, a $25 million grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation to the university to develop a Bio/computational Evolution in Action Consortium (BEACON) within the Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5056021
| 1,995,317 |
1,774,257 |
The Reverend James Calder was elected as Penn State's fifth president in 1871. Calder eliminated Burrowes’ proposed three-course system and reinstated the four-year curriculum and felt that the Morrill Act envisioned more than simply formal instruction in agriculture, reincorporating several elements of orthodox classical institutions. The university began to offer non-agricultural baccalaureate degrees, and adopted the name Pennsylvania State College in 1874 to reflect the broadened curriculum. No provisions were made for mechanic arts, save for how they related to agriculture and scientific courses. Routine field demonstrations of various farm implements began to be incorporated into the curriculum, and civil engineering coursework was offered only at a high level; labs and practicums were nonexistent, as the “applications of knowledge” available at local businesses (e.g. textile factories, gas and water works, and coal mines) were felt to be sufficient. Meanwhile, colleges and universities across the nation with dedicated engineering departments rose to 70 by 1872 – more than half of which were land-grant endowments – and Penn State continued to lag due to the insistence on imitating classical institutions. The receipts from sale of land scrip were converted to an interest-bearing bond in 1872, leading to (among other things) the abolishing of tuition in 1874: students were instead charged a flat $20 annual fee for fuel, lighting, and janitorial service. Only 14 students graduated during 1875 – 1877, and dissatisfaction with Calder's administration among trustees, faculty, and the legislature led to his resignation in 1879.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31430357
| 1,773,260 |
551,180 |
Both of his sons were called into the army after war broke out in 1914 . The following year he was appointed Quain Professor of physics at University College London. He had to wait for almost a year to contribute to the war effort: finally, in July 1915, he was appointed to the Board of Invention and Research set up by the Admiralty. In September, his younger son Robert died of wounds at Gallipoli. In November, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with elder son William Lawrence. The Navy was struggling to prevent sinkings by unseen, submerged U boats. The scientists recommended that the best tactic was to listen for the submarines. The Navy had a hydrophone research establishment at Aberdour Scotland, staffed with navy men. In November 1915, two young physicists were added to its staff. Bowing to outside pressure for using science, in July 1916, the Admiralty appointed Bragg as scientific director at Aberdour, assisted by three additional young physicists. They developed an improved directional hydrophone, which finally convinced the Admiralty of their usefulness. Late in 1916, Bragg with his small group moved to Harwich, where the staff was enlarged and they had access to a submarine for tests. In France, where scientists had been mobilized since the beginning of the war, the physicist Paul Langevin made a major stride with echolocation, generating intense sound pulses with quartz sheets oscillated at high frequency, which were then used as microphones to listen for echoes. Quartz was usable when vacuum tubes became available at the end of 1917 to amplify the faint signals. The British made sonar practicable by using mosaics of small quartz bits rather than slices from a large crystal. In January 1918, Bragg moved into the Admiralty as head of scientific research in the anti-submarine division. By war's end British vessels were being equipped with sonar manned by trained listeners.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=396459
| 550,892 |
1,494,055 |
Near the end of the 19th century, volunteer organizations such as St. John Ambulance began teaching the principles of first aid at mining sites and near large railway centers. By the dawn of the 20th century, additional organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross began teaching first aid to lay people. Over the years, these organizations trained hundreds of thousands of people in the elements of providing assistance until definitive care could be arranged. The training in these courses assumed that definitive care was nearby and could be delivered quickly. Eventually there was a realization that this training, while valuable, needed to be supplemented and/or revised to deal with the extended time and limited resources inherent when a medical crisis occurs in a wilderness setting. In the 1950s organizations such as The Mountaineers began developing training programs that addressed these special needs. In 1966, the US Government, through the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, gave the Department of Transportation (DOT) responsibility for creating a national Emergency Medical Services System (EMS). From this program came the standardized curriculum for the position of emergency medical technician (EMT). The first wilderness EMT course was taught in 1976 to help EMTs in Colorado adapt their skills and knowledge when working with search and rescue teams. By 1977 organizations such as Stonehearth Open Learning Opportunities (SOLO) were offering specialized wilderness first aid training to their instructors. Meanwhile the DOT EMS program recognized a need to develop standardized training for "first responders" such as truck drivers, policemen and fireman who could lend assistance during the initial part of "golden period" until an ambulance with an EMT arrived.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6306478
| 1,493,214 |
1,405,993 |
From this period onwards (roughly the late 1960s onwards), multiple designs were trialed to resolve the issues of guy wires which obstructed mobility and to improve the quality of safety and services, as well as reducing cost. Some examples of design elements during this period included fiberglass paneled stations, aluminum window frames and timber panels. However, these designs were not very effective at overcoming the challenge of accumulating snowdrift, frost or maintaining effective insulation. While there were significant challenges to building research stations during this time, there were also some building innovations that developed from this period of architectural experimentation in the region. Engineers found that buildings could be constructed to be parallel to the direction of the wind to prevent the accumulation of snowdrift. Another discovery that engineers made was that the structural foundations of research stations can be made directly into the rock bed of station sites at sites which were sediment and rock dominant over ice. After this period of trial and error, in the early 2000s, there began a movement to create more consistent, commercialized structures which emphasized durability. A notable example of this was the formation of the design of Halley VI in 2005, which involved a design competition to create the most effective and long-lasting research station suitable for its location on a floating ice shelf. The resulting design consists of an elevated station set on hydraulic stilts which allowed operators to physically move or relocate it out of snow drifts. Bert Buecking, an architect working on designs for India's National Center for Antarctic and Ocean Research's new research station emphasized the importance of this redesign on shifting the approach to the construction of Antarctic research stations, "when the U.K. built Halley VI, many nations realized the importance of doing something special, and not just doing something." Similarly, the Australian Antarctic Building System (AANBUS) has claimed to set the standard for design in the Antarctic by utilizing braced steel framed structures, insulated panels and vapour barriers to overcome previous design and practicality issues.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1857169
| 1,405,203 |
568,241 |
The EL/M-2075 is a solid-state L-band conformal array radar system for use on a Boeing 707 and other aircraft. Phalcon, as the complete AEW mission suite is referred to, is intended for airborne early warning, tactical surveillance of airborne and surface targets and intelligence gathering. It also integrates the command and control capabilities needed to employ this information. The system uses six panels of phased-array elements: two on each side of the fuselage, one in an enlarged nosecone and one under the tail. Each array consists of 768 liquid-cooled, solid-state transmitting and receiving elements, each of which is weighted in phase and amplitude. These elements are driven by individual modules and every eight modules are connected to a transmit/receive group. Groups of 16 of these eight module batches are linked back to what is described as a prereceive/transmit unit, and a central six-way control is used to switch the pre-transmit/receive units of the different arrays on a time division basis. As used in its Chilean Boeing 707-based application, the lateral fairings measured approximately 12 × 2 m and were mounted on floating beds to prevent airframe flexing degrading the radar accuracy. Each array scans a given azimuth sector, providing a total coverage of 360°. Scanning is carried out electronically in both azimuth and elevation. Radar modes include high PRF search and full track, track-while-scan, a slow scan detection mode for hovering and low-speed helicopters (using rotor blade returns) and a low PRF ship detection mode.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3854004
| 567,951 |
1,329,655 |
The brain is an ever-changing, plastic, model of information sharing and processing. In order for the brain to incorporate new experiences into a refined schema, it has to undergo specific modifications to consolidate and assimilate all new information. Synaptic plasticity can be described as the changing in strength between two related neurons. Neuroplasticity is most clearly seen in the instances of REM sleep deprivation during brain maturation. Regional brain measurements in neonatal REM sleep deprived rats displayed a significant size reduction in areas such as the cerebral cortex and the brain stem. The rats were deprived during critical periods after birth, and subsequently anatomical size reduction is observed. Using a pursuit task (used to test visuomotor capabilities) in combination with an fMRI, Maquet et al., 2003, found that increases in activation were seen in the supplementary eye field and right dentate nucleus of subjects who were allowed to sleep as compared to sleep deprived individuals. The right superior temporal sulcus was also noticed to have higher activation levels. When functional connectivity was analyzed it was found that the dentate nucleus was more closely involved with the functions of the superior temporal sulcus. The results suggest that performance on the pursuit task relies on the subject's ability to comprehend appropriate movement patterns in order to recreate the optimal movements. Sleep deprivation was found to interrupt the slow processes that lead to learning of this procedural skill and alter connectivity changes that would have normally been seen after a night of rest. Neuroplasticity has been thoroughly researched over the past few decades and results have shown that significant changes that occur in our cortical processing areas have the power to modulate neuronal firing to both new and previously experienced stimuli.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685741
| 1,328,926 |
1,138,356 |
Various institutions, universities, and organizations have dedicated years to performing clinical trials and conducting research on CIPN. The scientific community has had multiple breakthroughs in the mechanisms, prevention, and treatment of CIPN. In 2017, the National Cancer Institute's Symptom Management and Health-Related Quality of Life Steering Committee convened a meeting of CIPN and oncology management experts in the Clinical Trials Planning Meeting to evaluate the state of current research and plan ahead for future investigation. The goals of the meeting included identification of optimal outcome measures to define the CIPN phenotype, establishment of parameters that guide the evaluation of clinically meaningful effects, the adoption of approaches for inclusion of translational and biomarker and/or genetic measures, and discussion of the next steps to implement ideas into future clinical trials. Some of the lessons and limitations they learned from conducting past CIPN research are that 1) there was insufficient collaboration between pre-clinical and clinical researchers 2) patient reported CIPN symptoms are more sensitive than clinician-based assessments 3) there is substantial heterogeneity in the forms of neuropathy manifested across different patients 4) there are promising and understudied behavioral interventions for CIPN that may appeal more to patients who do not want pharmacological treatments. Based on these lessons, the experts concluded that a multifaceted approach is needed to alleviate the burden of CIPN including more well-planned phase II intervention clinical trials, more longitudinal studies on the risk factors of CIPN, and the development of research networks to connect work from different research facilities. Overall, more research is needed to advance understanding of CIPN etiology, risk assessment, development, and treatment (e.g. duloxetine, genetic targets, and exercise).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32843140
| 1,137,763 |
1,006,330 |
At one time, at least 25 million American bison were spread across the United States and Canada. However, by the late 1880s, the total number of bison in the United States had been reduced to fewer than 600. Most of these were collected onto various private ranches, and the last known free-roaming population of bison consisted of fewer than 30 in the area which later became Yellowstone National Park. Although farmers and ranchers considered bison to be a nuisance, some people were concerned about the demise of this North American icon, so individual landowners and zoos took steps to protect them. Some people saved bison with the express purpose of ranching or hunting them (see Antelope Island bison herd). Others such as the American Bison Society were also formed with the idea of saving the species and reintroducing them to natural range. Plains bison have since been reintroduced into a number of locations in North America. Five main foundation herds of American bison supplied animals intended to save them from extinction. The northernmost introduction occurred in 1928 when the Alaska Game Commission brought bison to the area of present-day Delta Junction. Bison taken from this transplant were also introduced to other Alaskan locations, including Farewell and Chitina. The Delta Junction herd prospered the most, with a population of several hundred throughout the late 20th century. This herd is popular with hunters interested in hundreds of pounds of high-quality meat, but has been a problem for farming operations in the area. Though American bison generally prefer grasslands and plains habitats, they are quite adaptable and live in conditions ranging from desert, as in the case of the Henry Mountains bison herd, to forested areas, such as those of the Yellowstone Park bison herd; yet, they are all of the same subspecies "Bison bison bison". Currently, over 500,000 bison are spread over the United States and Canada. However, most of these are on private ranches, and some of them have small amounts of hybridized cattle genes. Significant public bison herds that do not appear to have hybridized domestic cattle genes are the Yellowstone Park, the Henry Mountains, the Custer State Park, the Wind Cave, and the Wood Buffalo National Park bison herds and subsidiary herds descended from it in Canada.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3737931
| 1,005,811 |
13,040 |
The series' production design, such as the choice of sets, props, and costumes, has received high praise for its accuracy. Several sources have commended the attention to even minor setting details, such as the usage of actual Kyiv-region license plate numbers, and a "New Yorker" review states that "the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen" from either Western or Russian filmmakers. Oleksiy Breus, a Chernobyl engineer, commends the portrayal of the symptoms of radiation poisoning; however, Robert Gale, a doctor who treated Chernobyl victims, states that the miniseries overstated the symptoms by suggesting that the patients were actively radioactive. In a more critical judgment, a review from the "Moscow Times" highlights some small design errors: for instance, Soviet soldiers are inaccurately shown as holding their weapons in Western style, and Legasov's apartment was too "dingy" for a scientist of his status. During an interview to BBC Russian, the real Lyudmilla Ignatenko described how she suffered harassment and criticism when the series was aired. She claimed reporters hounded her at home and even jammed their foot in her door as they tried to interview her, and that she suffered criticism for exposing her unborn daughter to Vasily, despite the fact she hadn't known anything about radiation then, and that risk to a fetus from such an exposure is infinitesimally small. She said she never gave HBO and Sky Atlantic permission to tell her story, saying there had been a single phone call offering money after filming had been completed. She thought the call was a hoax because it came from a Moscow number, and hung up. HBO Sky rejects this, saying they had multiple exchanges with Lyudmilla before, during, and after filming with the opportunity to participate and provide feedback, and at no time did she express a wish for her story to not be included.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55876266
| 13,035 |
1,066,346 |
The sandstone and limestone-framed brick building was constructed from the year 1576 to 1580. Built in the Flemish Renaissance style, the erection of the site was overseen by Danish architect Hans van Emden and sculptor Johan Gregor van der Schardt. The main building of Uraniborg was square, about 15 meters on a side, and built mostly of red brick. Two semi-circular towers, one each on the north and south sides of the main building, gave the building a somewhat rectangular footprint overall. The plan and façade of the building, and also the plan of the surrounding gardens, are designed on grids, with proportions that Tycho carefully specified. These proportions may have been intended to make Uraniborg function as an astrological talisman, benefiting the health of its occupants by increasing the influences of the sun and Jupiter. The main floor consisted of four rooms, one of which was occupied by Brahe and his family, the other three for visiting astronomers. The northern tower housed the kitchens, and the southern a library. In this library and within Brahe's personal study is etched the motto "Non haberi sed esse," which translates from Latin to "What one is, is more important than what one is perceived to be." It serves as a warning to discern perception from reality in pursuit of knowledge. The second floor was divided into three rooms, two of equal size and one larger. The larger room was reserved for visiting royalty; James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) visited on March 20, 1590. On this level the towers housed the primary astronomical instruments, accessed from outside the building or from doors on this floor. Balconies, supported on wooden posts, housed additional instruments slightly further from the building, giving them a wider angle of view. On the third floor was a loft, subdivided into eight smaller rooms for students. Only the roofs of the towers reached this level, although a single additional tower extended above the loft in the middle of the building, similar to a widow's walk, accessed via a spiral staircase from the 3rd floor. Uraniborg also featured a large basement; it housed an alchemical laboratory at one end, and storage for food, salt and fuel at the other. Additionally, Uraniborg also contained a small prison room in order to deal with disorderly tenants or guests.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=243449
| 1,065,792 |
329,243 |
In 1983, researchers at Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) Research Center, Switzerland, invented the "super-twisted nematic (STN) structure" for passive matrix-addressed LCDs. H. Amstutz et al. were listed as inventors in the corresponding patent applications filed in Switzerland on July 7, 1983, and October 28, 1983. Patents were granted in Switzerland CH 665491, Europe EP 0131216, and many more countries. In 1980, Brown Boveri started a 50/50 joint venture with the Dutch Philips company, called Videlec. Philips had the required know-how to design and build integrated circuits for the control of large LCD panels. In addition, Philips had better access to markets for electronic components and intended to use LCDs in new product generations of hi-fi, video equipment and telephones. In 1984, Philips researchers Theodorus Welzen and Adrianus de Vaan invented a video speed-drive scheme that solved the slow response time of STN-LCDs, enabling high-resolution, high-quality, and smooth-moving video images on STN-LCDs. In 1985, Philips inventors Theodorus Welzen and Adrianus de Vaan solved the problem of driving high-resolution STN-LCDs using low-voltage (CMOS-based) drive electronics, allowing the application of high-quality (high resolution and video speed) LCD panels in battery-operated portable products like notebook computers and mobile phones. In 1985, Philips acquired 100% of the Videlec AG company based in Switzerland. Afterwards, Philips moved the Videlec production lines to the Netherlands. Years later, Philips successfully produced and marketed complete modules (consisting of the LCD screen, microphone, speakers etc.) in high-volume production for the booming mobile phone industry.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17932
| 329,068 |
237,881 |
Contamination of air and soil due to atmospheric testing is only part of a wider issue. Water contamination due to improper disposal of spent uranium and decay of sunken nuclear-powered submarines is a major problem in the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Although the Russian government states that the radioactive power cores are stable, various scientists have come forth with serious concerns about the 32,000 spent nuclear fuel elements that remain in the sunken vessels. There have been no major incidents other than the explosion and sinking of a nuclear-powered submarine in August 2000, but many international scientists are still uneasy at the prospect of the hulls eroding, releasing uranium into the sea and causing considerable contamination. Although the submarines pose an environmental risk, they have yet to cause serious harm to public health. However, water contamination in the area of the Mayak test site, especially at Lake Karachay, is extreme, and has gotten to the point where radioactive byproducts have found their way into drinking water supplies. It has been an area of concern since the early 1950s, when the Soviets began disposing of tens of millions of cubic meters of radioactive waste by pumping it into the small lake. Half a century later, in the 1990s, there are still hundreds of millions of curies of waste in the Lake, and at points contamination has been so severe that a mere half-hour of exposure to certain regions would deliver a dose of radiation sufficient to kill 50% of humans. Although the area immediately surrounding the lake is devoid of population, the lake has the potential to dry up in times of drought. Most significantly, in 1967, it dried up and winds carried radioactive dust over thousands of square kilometers, exposing at least 500,000 citizens to a range of health risks. To control dust, Soviet scientists piled concrete on top of the lake. Although this was effective in helping mediate the amount of dust, the weight of the concrete pushed radioactive materials into closer contact with standing underground groundwater. It is difficult to gauge the overall health and environmental effects of the water contamination at Lake Karachay because figures on civilian exposure are unavailable, making it hard to show causation between elevated cancer rates and radioactive pollution specifically from the lake.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1217440
| 237,762 |
158,478 |
Some experts argue that the first step to increasing the cyber defenses of the smart electric grid is completing a comprehensive risk analysis of existing infrastructure, including research of software, hardware, and communication processes. Additionally, as intrusions themselves can provide valuable information, it could be useful to analyze system logs and other records of their nature and timing. Common weaknesses already identified using such methods by the Department of Homeland Security include poor code quality, improper authentication, and weak firewall rules. Once this step is completed, some suggest that it makes sense to then complete an analysis of the potential consequences of the aforementioned failures or shortcomings. This includes both immediate consequences as well as second- and third-order cascading effects on parallel systems. Finally, risk mitigation solutions, which may include simple remediation of infrastructure inadequacies or novel strategies, can be deployed to address the situation. Some such measures include recoding of control system algorithms to make them more able to resist and recover from cyberattacks or preventive techniques that allow more efficient detection of unusual or unauthorized changes to data. Strategies to account for human error which can compromise systems include educating those who work in the field to be wary of strange USB drives, which can introduce malware if inserted, even if just to check their contents.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13201685
| 158,397 |
93,486 |
The project that eventually led to the AV-8B's creation started in the early 1970s as a cooperative effort between the United States and United Kingdom, aimed at addressing the operational inadequacies of the first-generation Hawker Siddeley Harrier. Early efforts centered on a larger, more powerful Pegasus engine to dramatically improve the capabilities of the Harrier. Because of budgetary constraints, the UK abandoned the project in 1975. Following the UK's withdrawal, McDonnell Douglas extensively redesigned the earlier AV-8A Harrier to create the AV-8B. While retaining the general layout of its predecessor, the aircraft incorporates a new, larger composite wing with an additional hardpoint on each side, an elevated cockpit, a redesigned fuselage and other structural and aerodynamic refinements. The aircraft is powered by an upgraded version of the Pegasus. The AV-8B made its maiden flight in November 1981 and entered service with the USMC in January 1985. Later upgrades added a night-attack capability and radar, resulting in the AV-8B(NA) and AV-8B Harrier II Plus versions, respectively. An enlarged version named Harrier III was also studied but not pursued. The UK, through British Aerospace, re-joined the improved Harrier project as a partner in 1981, giving it a significant work-share in the project. Following corporate mergers in the 1990s, Boeing and BAE Systems have jointly supported the program. Approximately 340 aircraft were produced in a 22-year production program that ended in 2003.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18940560
| 93,445 |
1,301,794 |
The main characteristic of SPS is that the pulsed or unpulsed DC or AC current directly passes through the graphite die, as well as the powder compact, in case of conductive samples. Joule heating has been found to play a dominant role in the densification of powder compacts, which results in achieving near theoretical density at lower sintering temperature compared to conventional sintering techniques. The heat generation is internal, in contrast to the conventional hot pressing, where the heat is provided by external heating elements. This facilitates a very high heating or cooling rate (up to 1000 K/min), hence the sintering process generally is very fast (within a few minutes). The general speed of the process ensures it has the potential of densifying powders with nanosize or nanostructure while avoiding coarsening which accompanies standard densification routes. This has made SPS a good method for preparation of a range of materials with enhanced magnetic, magnetoelectric, piezoelectric, thermoelectric, optical or biomedical properties. SPS is also used for sintering of carbon nanotubes for development of field electron emission electrodes. Functioning of SPS systems is schematically explained in a video link. While the term "spark plasma sintering" is commonly used, the term is misleading since neither a spark nor a plasma is present in the process. It has been experimentally verified that densification is facilitated by the use of a current. SPS can be used as a tool for the creation of functionally graded soft-magnetic materials and it is useful in accelerating the development of magnetic materials. It has been found that this process improves the oxidation resistance and wear resistance of sintered tungsten carbide composites compared to conventional consolidation methods.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2414066
| 1,301,080 |
1,099,744 |
To assist in understanding the risks associated with different NIS introduction vectors, traditional microscope biodiversity assessments are increasingly being complemented by eDNA metabarcoding. This allows a wide range of diverse taxonomic assemblages, at many life stages to be identified. It can also enable the detection of NIS that may have been overlooked using traditional methods. Despite the great potential of eDNA metabarcoding tools for broad-scale taxonomic screening, a key challenge for eDNA in the context of environmental monitoring of marine pests, and particularly when monitoring enclosed environments such as some bilge spaces or ballast tanks, is differentiating dead and viable organisms. Extracellular DNA can persist in dark/cold environments for extended periods of time (months to years, thus many of the organisms detected using eDNA metabarcoding may have not been viable in the location of sample collection for days or weeks. In contrast, ribonucleic acid (RNA) deteriorates rapidly after cell death, likely providing a more accurate representation of viable communities. Recent metabarcoding studies have explored the use of co-extracted eDNA and eRNA molecules for monitoring benthic sediment samples around marine fish farms and oil drilling sites, and have collectively found slightly stronger correlations between biological and physico-chemical variables along impact gradients when using eRNA. From a marine biosecurity prospective, the detection of living NIS may represent a more serious and immediate threat than the detection of NIS based purely on a DNA signal. Environmental RNA may therefore offer a useful method for identifying living organisms in samples.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66619486
| 1,099,184 |
102,902 |
One side of the coin is in this case a clear loser: the middle class, which is unwillingly being excluded from economic prosperity, social benefit and the long desired ideal of American Dream. While it is impossible to measure the exact effects on the middle class, the side effects are more obvious: opioid epidemic, dramatic raise in "deaths of despair" (suicides, mental health and alcoholism), and lowering level of life expectancy in these societies are just some of them. Quite surprisingly however, the high-profile member of society is being harmed by meritocracy as well: they have to pay a significant price for their hectic working life. Many of them admit suffering from physical and mental health issues, inability to sustain a good quality personal life and lack of time spent with their families. What is of even higher importance is that meritocracy causes a continuous "competitive trap" within the elite social circles as its members are from a very early age basically contestants of a meritocratic marathon that starts in their exclusive preschools, continues at colleges and universities and finally moves its second half to the work environment. They are truly trapped in this vicious race where they are compelled to constantly compete with others and, most importantly, with themselves. In this matter, the author encounters the basic weakness of the aspirational lifestyle, which promotes the idea of meritocracy as a means for fair evaluation of the most skilled, gifted and hard-working.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20971
| 102,857 |
1,212,336 |
Even craft-based military technologies were not generally produced by military funding. Instead, craftsmen and inventors developed weapons and military tools independently and actively sought the interest of military patrons afterward. Following the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, governments and military leaders did try to harness the methods of both science and engineering for more specific ends, but frequently without success. In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, French artillery officers were often trained as engineers, and military leaders from this mathematical tradition attempted to transform the process of weapons manufacture from a craft-based enterprise to an organized and standardized system based on engineering principles and interchangeable parts (pre-dating the work of Eli Whitney in the U.S.). During the Revolution, even natural scientists participated directly, attempting to create “weapons more powerful than any we possess” to aid the cause of the new French Republic, though there were no means for the revolutionary army to fund such work. Each of these efforts, however, was ultimately unsuccessful in producing militarily useful results. A slightly different outcome came from the longitude prize of the 18th century, offered by the British government for an accurate method of determining a ship's longitude at sea (essential for the safe navigation of the powerful British navy): intended to promote—and financially reward—a scientific solution, it was instead won by a scientific outsider, the clockmaker John Harrison. However, the naval utility of astronomy did help increase the number of capable astronomers and focus research on developing more powerful and versatile instruments.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4999816
| 1,211,684 |
369,804 |
Since its introduction in the 19th century, "Alliaria petiolata" has been shown to be extremely successful as an invasive species in temperate North America due, in part, to its secretion of allelopathic chemicals. These inhibit the germination of most competing plants and kill beneficial soil fungi needed by many plants, such as many tree species, to successfully see their seedlings grow to maturity. The monoculture formation of an herb layer carpet by this plant has been shown to dramatically alter forests, making them wetter, having fewer and fewer trees, and having more vines such as poison ivy ("Toxicodendron radicans"). The overall herb layer biodiversity is also drastically reduced, particularly in terms of sedges and forbs. Research has found that removing 80% of the garlic mustard infestation plants did not lead to a particularly significant recovery of that diversity. Instead, it required around 100% removal. Given that not one of an estimated 76 species that prey on the plant has been approved for biological control in North America and the variety of mechanisms the plant has to ensure its dominance without them (e.g. high seed production, self-fertility, allelopathy, spring growth that occurs before nearly all native plants, roots that break easily when pulling attempts are made, a complete lack of palatability for herbivores at all life stages, etc.) it is unlikely that such a high level of control can be established and maintained on the whole. It is estimated that adequate control can be achieved with the introduction of two European weevils, including one that is monophagous. The USDA's TAG group has blocked these introductions since 2004. In addition to being invasive, garlic mustard also is a threat to native North American "Pieris" butterflies such as "P. oleracea", as they preferentially oviposit on it, although it is toxic to their larvae.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3794
| 369,610 |
1,228,275 |
European powers imposed a series of "unequal treaties" in the 1850s and 1860s that gave privileged roles to their nationals in specially designated treaty ports. Representative was the 1858 Treaty with the United States, called the "Harris Treaty." It opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities to trade, And provided for the exchange of diplomats. It granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, So that they govern themselves and were not under the control of Japanese courts or authorities. There were numerous trading stipulations favorable to the Americans. The Dutch, British and Russians quickly followed suit with their own treaties, backed up by their own powerful naval forces. The unequal treaties were part of the series imposed on non-Western countries, such as Persia 1857, Turkey 1861, Siam 1855, and China 1858. The inequality was not quite as severe as suffered by these other countries, but it rankled so much that ending the inequality became a priority that was finally achieved in the 1890s. The humiliation was not as bad as China suffered, but it energized anti-foreign forces inside Japan. On the other hand, the new treaties, provided for tariffs on imports from Europe; imports multiplied by a factor of nine between 1860 and 1864, and the tariff revenue provided major financial backing for the Meiji regime. Exports of tea, silk and other Japanese products multiplied by a factor of four in four years, dramatically stimulating the local economy while causing galloping inflation that drove up the price of rice. The Meiji leaders sketched a new vision for a modernized Japan's leadership role in Asia, but they realized that this role required that Japan develop its national strength, cultivate Japanese nationalism among the population, and carefully craft policies toward potential enemies. The skills and tricks of negotiation had to be learned, so they could compete on an equal basis with experienced Western diplomats. No longer could Westerners be seen as "barbarians"; In time, Japan formed a corps of professional diplomats and negotiators.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54108025
| 1,227,613 |
8,908 |
Since the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that—while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an "extraordinary American statesman"—he was "one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as "a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina". He acknowledged that Calhoun also "believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests." Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34273
| 8,904 |
1,399,700 |
One futuristic device shown in the film already under development when the film was released in 1968 was voice-print identification; the first prototype was released in 1976. A credible prototype of a chess-playing computer already existed in 1968, even though it could be defeated by experts; computers did not defeat champions until the late 1980s. While 10-digit phone numbers for long-distance national dialing originated in 1951, longer phone numbers for international dialing became a reality in 1970. Installation of personal in-flight entertainment displays by major airlines began in the early-to-mid 1990s, offering video games, TV broadcasts and movies in a manner similar to that shown in the film. The film also shows flat-screen TV monitors, of which the first real-world prototype appeared in 1972 produced by Westinghouse, but was not used for broadcast television until 1998. Plane cockpit integrated system displays, known as "glass cockpits", were introduced in the 1970s (originally in NASA Langley's Boeing 737 Flying Laboratory). Today such cockpits appear not only in high-tech aircraft like the Boeing 777, but have also been employed in space shuttles, the first being "Atlantis" in 1985. Rudimentary voice-controlled computing began in the early 1980s with the SoftVoice Computer System and existed in more sophisticated form by the early 2000s, although not as sophisticated as depicted in the film. The first picture phone was demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair; however, due to the bandwidth limitations of telephone lines, personal video communication did not succeed commercially and has only been practical over broadband internet connections. Personal (audio) wireless telephones were ubiquitous in 2001, and yet no one in the movie had a small personal communication device.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37415478
| 1,398,925 |
1,658,971 |
Rowland held academic posts at Princeton University (1952–56) and at the University of Kansas (1956–64) before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in 1964. At Irvine in the early 1970s he began working with Mario J. Molina. Rowland was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978 and served as a president of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1993. His best-known work was the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion. Rowland theorized that man made organic compound gases combine with solar radiation and decompose in the stratosphere, releasing atoms of chlorine and chlorine monoxide that are individually able to destroy large numbers of ozone molecules. It was obvious that Frank had a good idea of what was occurring at higher altitudes when he stated "...I knew that such a molecule could not remain inert in the atmosphere forever, if only because solar photochemistry at high altitudes would break it down". Rowland's research, first published in "Nature" magazine in 1974, initiated a scientific investigation of the problem. In 1978, a first ban on CFC-based aerosols in spray cans was issued in the United States. The actual production did however not stop and was soon on the old levels. It took till the 1980s to allow for a global regulation policy.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=637217
| 1,658,038 |
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