Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotational axis of a rotating body. It can be defined as a change in direction of the rotation axis in which the second Euler angle (nutation) is constant. In physics, there are two types of precession: torque-free and torque-induced.
In astronomy, "precession" refers to any of several slow changes in an astronomical body's rotational or orbital parameters, and especially to the Earth's precession of the equinoxes. See Precession (astronomy).
This is a Latin maxim meaning "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes" (literally, "There must not be debate concerning tastes.")
The implication is that everyone's personal preferences are merely subjective opinions that cannot be "right" or "wrong", so they should never be argued about as if they were.
This phrase is famously misquoted in Act I of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull. The character Shamrayev conflates it with the phrase de mortuis nil nisi bonum (in the alternate form: de mortuis, aut bene aut nihil – "of the dead, either [speak] good or [say] nothing"), resulting in "de gustibus aut bene, aut nihil", "Let nothing be said of taste but what is good".
Telemetry is a technology that allows measurements to be made at a distance, via radio wave or IP network transmission and reception of the information. The word is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure. Systems that need external instructions and data to operate require the counterpart of telemetry, telecommand.
Although the term commonly refers to wireless data transfer mechanisms (e.g. using radio, hypersonic or infrared systems), it also encompasses data transferred over other media such as a telephone or computer network, optical link or other wired communications like phase line carriers. Many modern telemetry systems take advantage of the low cost and ubiquity of GSM networks by using SMS to receive and transmit telemetry data.
frisson (plural frissons)
PAGEOS (PAssive Geodetic Earth Orbiting Satellite) was a balloon satellite which was launched by the NASA in June 1966. Pageos had a diameter of exactly 100 feet (30.48 m), consisted of a 0.5 mils (12.7 µm) thick mylar plastic film coated with vapour deposited aluminium enclosing a volume of 524,000 cubic feet (14,800 m) and was used for the Weltnetz der Satellitentriangulation (Worldwide Satellite Triangulation Network) -- a global cooperation organized by Hellmut Schmid (Switzerland & USA) 1969-1973.
Finished in 1974, the network connected 46 stations (3000–5000 km distance) of all continents with an accuracy of 3–5 m (approx. 20 times better than terrestrial triangulations at that time).
Gaucho (Spanish: [ˈɡautʃo]) or Gaúcho (Portuguese: [ɡaˈuʃu]) is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, Gran Chaco, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Southern Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, eastern and southern Bolivia and Southern Chile. In Brazil, gaúcho is also the main gentilic of the people from the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Gaucho is a loose equivalent of the North American "cowboy" (vaquero, in Spanish). Like the North American word cowboy, the Chilean huaso, the Cuban guajiro, the Venezuelan or Colombian llanero or the Mexican charro, the term often connotes the 19th century more than the present day; then gauchos made up the majority of the rural population, herding cattle on the vast estancias, and practising hunting as their main economic activities.
There are several conflicting hypotheses concerning the origin of the term. It may derive from the Mapuche cauchu ("vagabond") or from the Quechua huachu ("orphan"), which gives also a different word in American Spanish, guacho and Brazilian Portuguese gaúcho. The first recorded uses of the term date from around the time of Argentine independence in 1816.
Joie de vivre (French pronunciation: [ʒwa də vivʁ], joy of living) is a French phrase often used in English to express a cheerful enjoyment of life; an exultation of spirit. Joie de vivre
Galangal (galanga, blue ginger, laos) is a rhizome of plants in the ginger family Zingiberaceae, with culinary and medicinal uses originating in Indonesia. (Lao: ຂ່າ "kha"; Thai: ข่า "kha"; Malay: lengkuas (Alpinia galanga); traditional Mandarin: 南薑 or 高良薑; simplified Mandarin: 南姜 or 高良姜; Cantonese: lam keong, 藍薑; Vietnamese: riềng) [For each previous language's note, IPA please?].
The rhizomes are used in various Asian cuisines (for example in Thai and Lao tom yum and tom kha gai soups, Vietnamese Huế cuisine (tre) and throughout Indonesian cuisine, for example, in soto). Though it is related to and resembles ginger, there is little similarity in taste.
Biomass, in ecology, is the mass of living biological organisms in a given area or ecosystem at a given time. Biomass can refer to species biomass, which is the mass of one or more species, or to community biomass, which is the mass of all species in the community. It can include microorganisms, plants or animals. The mass can be expressed as the average mass per unit area, or as the total mass in the community.
How biomass is measured depends on why it is being measured. Sometimes the biomass is regarded as the natural mass of organisms in situ, just as they are. For example, in a salmon fishery, the salmon biomass might be regarded as the total wet weight the salmon would have if they were taken out of the water. In other contexts, biomass can be measured in terms of the dried organic mass, so perhaps only 30% of the actual weight might count, the rest being water. For other purposes, only biological tissues count, and teeth, bones and shells are excluded.
Hypnagogia (from Greek hypnos "sleep" + agōgos "leading, inducing") is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (i.e., the onset of sleep), originally coined in adjectival form as "hypnagogic" by Alfred Maury.
The equivalent transition to wakefulness is termed the hypnopompic state. Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid dreaming, hallucinations, out of body experiences and sleep paralysis. The collective noun "Hypnagogia" was coined by Dr Andreas Mavromatis in his 1983 thesis (Brunel University) which was later published by Routledge (hardback 1987, paperback 1991) under the title "Hypnagogia" the Unique State of Consciousness Between Wakefulness and Sleep and reprinted in a new paperback edition in 2010 by Thyrsos Press. The term "hypnagogia" is employed by Dr Mavromatis to include both sleep onset and the transition from sleep to wakefulness; he retains, however, the adjectives "hypnagogic" and "hypnopompic" for the identification of specific experiences.
The demiurge is a concept from the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted by the Gnostics. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily thought of as being the same as the creator figure in the familiar monotheistic sense, because both the demiurge itself plus the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are considered either uncreated and eternal, or the product of some other being, depending on the system.
The word "demiurge" is an English word from a Latinized form of the Greek δημιουργός, dēmiourgos, literally "public worker", and which was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually it came to mean "producer" and eventually "creator". The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written circa 360 BC, in which the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. This is accordingly the definition of the demiurge in the Platonic (ca. 310 BC-90 BC) and Middle Platonic (ca. 90 BC-300 AD) philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school (third century onwards), the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world, and of the Ideas, but (in most neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. Accordingly, the demiurge is malevolent, as linked to the material world.
In statistics and machine learning, overfitting occurs when a statistical model describes random error or noise instead of the underlying relationship. Overfitting generally occurs when a model is excessively complex, such as having too many parameters relative to the number of observations. A model which has been overfit will generally have poor predictive performance, as it can exaggerate minor fluctuations in the data.
The possibility of overfitting exists because the criterion used for training the model is not the same as the criterion used to judge the efficacy of a model. In particular, a model is typically trained by maximizing its performance on some set of training data. However, its efficacy is determined not by its performance on the training data but by its ability to perform well on unseen data. Overfitting occurs when a model begins to memorize training data rather than learning to generalize from trend. As an extreme example, if the number of parameters is the same as or greater than the number of observations, a simple model can learn to perfectly predict the training data simply by memorizing the training data in its entirety. Such a model will typically fail drastically on unseen data, as it has not learned to generalize at all.
The Nokmim, also referred to as The Avengers or the Jewish Avengers, were groups of Jewish assassins that targeted Nazi war criminals with the aim of avenging the Holocaust.
The groups of Jews – some veterans of the Jewish brigade, and some veterans of the Partisans − were organized after World War II ended. The name refers to Nakam (Dam Yehudi Nakam–"Jewish Blood Will Be Avenged"), a Jewish organization founded by Abba Kovner in 1945.
