Friday, October 31, 2014

Precession


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).

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

De gustibus non est disputandum

De gustibus non est disputandum

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".

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Setun


Setun (Russian: Сетунь) was a balanced ternary computer developed in 1958 at Moscow State University. The device was built under the lead of Sergei Sobolev and Nikolay Brusentsov. It was the only modern ternary computer, using three-valued ternary logic instead of two-valued binary logic prevalent in computers before and after Setun's conception. The computer was built to fulfill the needs of the Moscow State University and was manufactured at the Kazan Mathematical plant. Fifty computers were built and production was then halted in 1965. In the period between 1965 and 1970, a regular binary computer was then used at Moscow State University to replace it. Although this replacement binary computer performed equally well, it was 2.5 times the cost of the Setun. In 1970, a new ternary computer, the Setun-70, was designed. The computer was named after the Setun River, which ends near Moscow University.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Telemetry

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.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

frisson

frisson (plural frissons)

  1. A sudden surge of excitement.
    I felt a frisson just as they were about to announce the winner in my category.
  2. A shiver.
    Whenever the villain's theme played in the movie I felt a sudden frisson down my back.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

PAGEOS

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).

Friday, October 24, 2014

satelloon

A balloon satellite (Also occasionally referred to as a "satelloon", which is a trademarked name owned by Gilmore Schjeldahl's G.T. Schjeldahl Company) is a satellite that is inflated with gas after it has been put into orbit.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

do-rag


A do-rag, also spelled doo-rag, du-rag, durag, is a piece of cloth used to cover the head. Sometimes made of nylon material and have a "skullcap" fit it would be referred to as a "wavecap", also spelled "wave cap". According to the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster the term derives from 'do as in hairdo.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

ulnar


In human anatomy, the ulnar nerve is a nerve which runs near the ulna bone. The ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is in relation with the ulnar nerve. The nerve is the largest unprotected nerve in the human body (meaning unprotected by muscle or bone), so injury is common. This nerve is directly connected to the little finger, and the adjacent half of the ring finger, supplying the palmar side of these fingers, including both front and back of the tips, perhaps as far back as the fingernail beds.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Vodka

Vodka (Russian: водка, Ukrainian: горілка, Belarusian: Гарэлка, Polish: wódka) is a distilled beverage. It is composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits and/or sugar.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Gaucho

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.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Joie de vivre


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

"can be a joy of conversation, joy of eating, joy of anything one might do… And joie de vivre may be seen as a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life, a Weltanschauung. Robert's Dictionnaire says joie is sentiment exaltant ressenti par toute la conscience, that is, involves one's whole being."
Uniformly referenced in its standard French form by the educated, various corruptions are observed such as joie de vie which would translate to "joy of life."

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Friday, October 17, 2014

Galangal


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.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Jacaranda


Jacaranda is a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of Central America, Mexico, South America (especially Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay), and the Caribbean. It is also found in Asia, especially in Nepal. It is found throughout the Americas and Caribbean, and has been introduced to Australia, New Zealand, India, Fiji and parts of Africa. The genus name is also used as the common name.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Metrorrhagia

Metrorrhagia, also known as breakthrough bleeding or spotting, is uterine bleeding at irregular intervals, particularly between the expected menstrual periods.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Perpetual war

Perpetual war refers to a lasting state of war with no clear ending conditions. It also describes a situation of ongoing tension that seems likely to escalate at any moment, similar to the Cold War.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Biomass

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.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Hypnagogia

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.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Shinken

Shinken (真剣, literally meaning "real sword") is a Japanese term used to describe a Japanese sword that has a live forged blade and used for iaido (combat practice) and/or tameshigiri (cutting) practice, as opposed to an iaito or mogito (an unsharpened manufactured sword for iaido practice). "Gendaito" are hand-made shinken by one of approximately 250 swordsmiths active in Japan at the moment, members of the Japanese Swordsmith Association. These swordsmiths are limited by Japanese law to producing no more than twenty-four swords a year each. This limit, along with highly specialized skills and the need for a great deal of manual labour, accounts for the high price that a Japanese-made shinken (Nihonto) can fetch - starting from about $6,000 (US) for the blade alone, and going many times higher for genuine antique (Mukansa or Ningen Kokuho are two famous types) blades.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

demiurge


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.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Þrúðr


Þrúðr (Old Norse "strength"), sometimes anglicized as Thrúd or Thrud, is a daughter of the major god Thor in Norse mythology. Þrúðr is also the name of one of the valkyries who serve ale to the einherjar in Valhalla (Grímnismál, stanza 36). The two may or may not be the same figure.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Sigyn


Sigyn (Old Norse "victorious girl-friend") is a Nymph goddess and wife of Loki in Norse mythology. Sigyn is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the Poetic Edda, little information is provided about Sigyn other than her role in assisting Loki during his captivity. In the Prose Edda, her role in helping her husband through his time spent in bondage is stated again, she appears in various kennings, and her status as a goddess is twice stated. Sigyn may appear on the Gosforth Cross and has been the subject of an amount of theory and cultural references.

Monday, October 6, 2014

overfitting


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.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Neonatology

Neonatology is a subspecialty of pediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn infant. It is a hospital-based specialty, and is usually practiced in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The principal patients of neonatologists are newborn infants who are ill or requiring special medical care due to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation, congenital malformations (birth defects), sepsis, or birth asphyxias.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

doula

A doula (pronounced "doó la", also known as a labour coach and originating from the Ancient Greek word δούλη meaning female servant or slave) is a nonmedical person who assists a woman before, during, or after childbirth, as well as her partner and/or family by providing information, physical assistance, and emotional support. The provision of continuous support during labour by doulas, or nurses, family, or friends, is associated with improved maternal and fetal health and a variety of other benefits.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Midwifery

Midwifery is a health care profession in which providers offer care to childbearing women during pregnancy, labour and birth, and during the postpartum period. They also help care for the newborn and assist the mother with breastfeeding.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Nokmim

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.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Pseudopods


Pseudopods or pseudopodia (singular: pseudopodium) (from the Greek word ψευδοπόδια, ψευδός "fake, false" + πόδια "feet") are temporary projections of eukaryotic cells. Cells that possess this faculty are generally referred to as amoeboids. Pseudopodia extend and contract by the reversible assembly of actin subunits into microfilaments. Filaments near the cell's end interact with myosin which causes contraction. The pseudopodium extends itself until the actin reassembles itself into a network. This is how amoebas move, as well as some cells found in animals, such as white blood cells.

lordosis

  Lordosis is historically defined as an abnormal inward curvature of the lumbar spine.