Oral Proficiency Interview

An Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) is a standardized, global assessment of functional speaking ability. Taking the form of a conversation between the tester and test-taker, the test measures how well a person speaks a language by assessing their performance of a range of language tasks against specified criteria. In the United States, the criteria for each of ten proficiency levels are described in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, devised by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).
In an OPI, the test-taker is interviewed by a certified ACTFL tester, who guides the conversation to explore the abilities and limits of the individual’s oral target language abilities. During the course of the interview, the interviewee is guided to engage in a variety of tasks such as describing, narrating, and hypothesizing. The interview is recorded and scored by the interviewer as well as a second certified tester using the following scale: Superior, Advanced High, Advanced Mid, Advanced Low, Intermediate High, Intermediate Mid, Intermediate Low, Novice High, Novice Mid, Novice Low.
The OPI test format consists of four stages. In the first stage, otherwise known as the "Warm-up" stage, the interviewee is put at ease and provides the interviewer with information they can use later in the interview. The interviewer may ask "What are some things that interest you?" This stage is also used to indicate the interviewee's skill level before moving further into the interview. The second stage, called "Level Checks," helps identify what the interviewee can do and finds the highest level of sustained performance by the speaker (floor). Questions at the second stage might be,"Which cryptocurrency would you buy?" or "How is cryptocurrency changing the way we interact monetarily?" The third stage, known as "Probes" shows the interviewer what the interviewee cannot do, and finds the lowest level of performance which they are unable to sustain for prolonged periods of time (ceiling). Questions at the third stage might be, "Is Cryptocurrency a waste of money? Why or why not?" or "Explain to me why Cryptocurrency has more or less value." An effective OPI will show an interviewee what they can and can't do with their speech in the target language. The fourth and final stage, known as the "Wind-down," is designed to ease the interviewee and bring them to a comfortable level of speaking. The interviewer may end the interview by asking, "Do you have any plans for this weekend?" As the interviewer wraps up the interview, the interviewee will feel a sense of confidence as they exit the interview.
The levels of ACTFL’s scale can be conceived as an inverse triangle, with the “Superior” rating at the top representing a wide range of skill in linguistic structures, vocabulary, and fluency. The Novice Low category forms the bottom point of the triangle, showing little functional knowledge of the language. Each progressive category represents broader skills and depth of knowledge. While one can progress relatively quickly through the Novice levels, progress is much slower through the upper ratings.
OPI is generally used for native speakers of English, but it was adopted in South Korea after the computer version was developed by the Korean computer company Credu. In September 2009, 40,000 people applied to take the test in South Korea.
Oral Proficiency Interview - computer.
Oral Proficiency Interview - computer (OPIc) is a computerized test of English-usage skills developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and Language Testing International (LTI). It is a computer-based version of the OPI.
OPIc is a kind of test business interview. The one-hour test is a series of recorded questions which are assessed by computer. The test scores have seven levels. The evaluations are done by ACTFL professionals in the United States.
Criticism.
In addition to presenting both test takers and test users with a significant time and finciancial burden, some researchers have also noted that the ACTFL OPI is limited by the fact that its scores are based on a series of subjective statements, rather than empirical measurements of linguistic performance. Researchers have also shown that OPI test takers' ratings can be significantly affected by their anxiety during the test, and that rating judgements can vary significantly between individual raters.


Intermittent mechanism

The intermittent mechanism or intermittent movement is the device by which film is regularly advanced and then held in place for a brief duration of time in a movie camera or movie projector. This is in contrast to a continuous mechanism, whereby the film is constantly in motion and the image is held steady by optical or electronic methods. The reason the intermittent mechanism "works" for the viewer is because of a phenomenon called persistence of vision.
History.
Intermittent mechanisms were first used in sewing machines, in order for the fabric to be fed through correctly - ensuring it is stationary as each stitch is made, while moving the required distance between stitches.
Methods used.
The intermittent mechanism must be employed in concert with a rotating shutter which blocks light transmittance during the motion of the film and allows light through while the film is held in place usually by one or more registration pins. The intermittent mechanism can be accomplished in many ways, but most often, it is done with sprocket wheels, claws, or pins coupled to the camera or projector drive mechanism.
In movie theater projectors, the intermittent movement is often produced by a Geneva drive (Maltese cross mechanism).
However, in a movie camera, it is done through a process by which a shutter opens exposing the film negative to light for a split second (the standard for regular motion in North America is 1/48 of a second, which corresponds to 180 degrees, but shutters with 200 degrees were popular back when the then-available color negative film had an ASA of 50; today's color negative film is available with an ASA of 500), then the shutter closes blocking light from reaching the negative. Once the shutter is completely closed, a claw pulls down the next film frame of negative film by the sprocket holes into the film gate and the process begins again. A movie projector works in a similar way.


7 nm process

In semiconductor manufacturing, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors defines the 7 nm process as the MOSFET technology node following the 10 nm node. It is based on FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) technology, a type of multi-gate MOSFET technology.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) began production of 256 Mbit SRAM memory chips using a 7 nm process in June 2016, before Samsung began mass production of 7 nm devices in 2018. The first mainstream 7 nm mobile processor intended for mass market use, the Apple A12 Bionic, was released at Apple's September 2018 event. Although Huawei announced its own 7 nm processor before the Apple A12 Bionic, the Kirin 980 on August 31, 2018, the Apple A12 Bionic was released for public, mass market use to consumers before the Kirin 980. Both chips are manufactured by TSMC.
AMD has released their "Rome" (Epyc 2) processors for servers and datacenters, which are based on TSMC's 7nm node and feature up to 64 cores and 128 threads. They have also released their "Matisse" consumer desktop processors with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. However, the I/O die on the Rome multi-chip module (MCM) is fabricated with the GloFo 14 nm process, while the Matisse's I/O die uses the GloFo 12 nm process. The Radeon RX 5000 series is also based on the N7FF process.
Since 2009, however, "node" has become a commercial name for marketing purposes that indicates new generations of process technologies, without any relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch. For example, GlobalFoundries' 7 nm processes are similar to Intel's 10 nm process, thus the conventional notion of a process node has become blurred. TSMC and Samsung's 10 nm processes are somewhere between Intel's 14 nm and 10 nm processes in transistor density. The transistor density (number of transistors per square millimetre) is more important than transistor size, since smaller transistors no longer necessarily mean improved performance, or an increase in the number of transistors.
History.
Technology demos.
7 nm scale MOSFETs were first demonstrated by researchers in the early 2000s. In 2002, an IBM research team including Bruce Doris, Turkish engineer Omer Dokumaci, Taiwanese engineer Meikei Ieong and Romanian engineer Anda Mocuta fabricated a 6 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFET. In 2003, NEC's research team led by Hitoshi Wakabayashi and Shigeharu Yamagami fabricated a 5 nm MOSFET.
In July 2015, IBM announced that they had built the first functional transistors with 7 nm technology, using a silicon-germanium process.
In June 2016, TSMC had produced 256 Mbit SRAM memory cells at their 7 nm process, with a cell area of 0.027 square micrometres (550 F2) with reasonable risk production yields.
Expected commercialization and technologies.
In April 2016, TSMC announced that 7 nm trial production would begin in the first half of 2017. In April 2017, TSMC began risk production of 256 Mbit SRAM memory chips using a 7 nm (N7FF+) process, with extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). TSMC's 7 nm production plans, as of early 2017, were to use deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion lithography initially on this process node (N7FF), and transition from risk to commercial volume manufacturing from Q2 2017 to Q2 2018. Also, their later generation 7 nm (N7FF+) production is planned to use EUV multiple patterning and to have an estimated transition from risk to volume manufacturing between 2018 and 2019.
In September 2016, GlobalFoundries announced trial production in the second half of 2017 and risk production in early 2018, with test chips already running.
In February 2017, Intel announced Fab 42 in Chandler, Arizona will produce microprocessors using 7 nm manufacturing process. The company has not published any expected values for feature lengths at this process node.
In April 2018, TSMC announced volume production of 7 nm (CLN7FF, N7) chips. In June 2018, the company announced mass production ramp up.
In May 2018, Samsung announced production of 7 nm chips this year. ASML Holding NV is their main supplier of EUV lithography machines.
In August 2018, GlobalFoundries announced it was stopping development of 7 nm chips, citing cost.
On October 28, 2018, Samsung announced their second generation 7 nm process (7LPP) had entered risk production and should enter mass production in 2019.
On January 17, 2019, for the Q4 2018 earnings call, TSMC mentioned that different customers will have "different flavors" of second generation 7 nm.
On April 16, 2019, TSMC announced their 6 nm process called (CLN6FF, N6), which is expected to be in mass products from 2021. N6 uses EUVL in up to 5 layers, compared to up to 4 layers in their N7+ process.
On July 28, 2019, TSMC announced their second gen 7 nm process called N7P, which is DUV-based like their N7 process. Since N7P is fully IP-compatible with the original 7 nm, while N7+ (which uses EUV) is not, N7+ (announced earlier as '7 nm+') is a separate process from '7 nm'. N6 ('6 nm'), another EUV-based process, is planned to be released later than even TSMC's 5 nm (N5) process, with the IP-compatibility with N7. At their Q1 2019 earnings call, TSMC reiterated their Q4 2018 statement that N7+ would generate less than $1 billion TWD in revenue in 2019.
On October 5, 2019, AMD announced their EPYC Roadmap, featuring Milan chips built using TSMC's N7+ process.
On October 7, 2019, TSMC announced they started delivering N7+ products to market in high volume.
On March 27, 2021, Intel's CEO announced that they will launch Meteor Lake processors in 2023
Technology commercialization.
In June 2018, AMD announced 7 nm Radeon Instinct GPUs launching in the second half of 2018. In August 2018, the company confirmed the release of the GPUs.
On August 21, 2018, Huawei announced their HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC to be used in their Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro built using TSMC's 7 nm (N7) process.
On September 12, 2018, Apple announced their A12 Bionic chip used in iPhone XS and iPhone XR built using TSMC's 7 nm (N7) process. The A12 processor became the first 7 nm chip for mass market use as it released before the Huawei Mate 20. In October 30, 2018, Apple announced their A12X Bionic chip used in iPad Pro built using TSMC's 7 nm (N7) process.
On December 4, 2018, Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon 855 and 8cx built using TSMC's 7 nm (N7) process. The first mass product featuring the Snapdragon 855 was the Lenovo Z5 Pro GT, which was announced on December 18, 2018.
On May 29, 2019, MediaTek announced their 5G SoC built using a TSMC 7 nm process.
On July 7, 2019, AMD officially launched their Ryzen 3000 series of central processing units, based on the TSMC 7 nm process and Zen 2 microarchitecture.
On August 6, 2019, Samsung announced their Exynos 9825 SoC, the first chip built using their 7LPP process. The Exynos 9825 is the first mass market chip built featuring EUVL.
On September 6, 2019, Huawei announced their HiSilicon Kirin 990 4G & 990 5G SoCs, built using TSMC's N7 and N7+ processes.
On September 10, 2019, Apple announced their A13 Bionic chip used in iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro built using TSMC's 2nd gen N7P process.
7 nm manufacturing made up 36% of TSMC's revenue in the second quarter of 2020.
On August 17, 2020, IBM announced their IBM Power 10 processor.
On March 23, 2021, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger officially announced Meteor Lake 7nm microprocessor family at Intel Unleashed: Engineering the Future webcast.
7 nm patterning difficulties.
The 7 nm foundry node is expected to utilize any of or a combination of the following patterning technologies: pitch splitting, self-aligned patterning, and EUV lithography. Each of these technologies carries significant challenges in critical dimension (CD) control as well as pattern placement, all involving neighboring features.
Pitch splitting.
Pitch splitting involves splitting features that are too close together onto different masks, which are exposed successively, followed by litho-etch processing. Due to the use of different exposures, there is always the risk of overlay error between the two exposures, as well as different CDs resulting from the different exposures.
Spacer patterning.
Spacer patterning involves depositing a layer onto pre-patterned features, then etching back to form spacers on the sidewalls of those features, referred to as core features. After removing the core features, the spacers are used as an etch mask to define trenches in the underlying layer. While the spacer CD control is generally excellent, the trench CD may fall into one of two populations, due to the two possibilities of being located where a core feature was located or in the remaining gap. This is known as 'pitch walking'. Generally pitch = core CD + gap CD + 2 * spacer CD, but this does not guarantee core CD = gap CD. For FEOL features like gate or active area isolation (e.g., fins), the trench CD is not as critical as the spacer-defined CD, in which case, spacer patterning is actually the preferred patterning approach.
When self-aligned quadruple patterning (SAQP) is used, there is a second spacer that is utilized, replacing the first one. In this case, the core CD is replaced by core CD - 2* 2nd spacer CD, and the gap CD is replaced by gap CD - 2 * 2nd spacer CD. Thus, some feature dimensions are strictly defined by the second spacer CD, while the remaining feature dimensions are defined by the core CD, core pitch, and first and second spacer CD's. The core CD and core pitch are defined by conventional lithography, while the spacer CDs are independent of lithography. This is actually expected to have less variation than pitch splitting, where an additional exposure defines its own CD, both directly and through overlay.
Spacer-defined lines also require cutting. The cut spots may shift at exposure, resulting in distorted line ends or intrusions into adjacent lines.
Self-aligned litho-etch-litho-etch (SALELE) has been implemented for 7nm BEOL patterning.
EUV lithography.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (also known as EUV or EUVL) is capable of resolving features below 20 nm in conventional lithography style. However, the 3D reflective nature of the EUV mask results in new anomalies in the imaging. One particular nuisance is the two-bar effect, where a pair of identical bar-shaped features do not focus identically. One feature is essentially in the 'shadow' of the other. Consequently, the two features generally have different CDs which change through focus, and these features also shift position through focus. This effect may be similar to what may be encountered with pitch splitting. A related issue is the difference of best focus among features of different pitches.
EUV also has issues with reliably printing all features in a large population; some contacts may be completely missing or lines bridged. These are known as stochastic printing failures. The defect level is on the order of 1K/mm2.
The tip-to-tip gap is hard to control for EUV, largely due to the illumination constraint. A separate exposure(s) for cutting lines is preferred.
Attenuated phase shift masks have been used in production for 90 nm node for adequate focus windows for arbitrarily pitched contacts with the ArF laser wavelength (193 nm), whereas this resolution enhancement is not available for EUV.
At 2021 SPIE's EUV Lithography conference, it was reported by a TSMC customer that EUV contact yield was comparable to immersion multipatterning yield.
Comparison with previous nodes.
Due to these challenges, 7 nm poses unprecedented patterning difficulty in the back end of line (BEOL). The previous high-volume, long-lived foundry node (Samsung 10 nm, TSMC 16 nm) used pitch splitting for the tighter pitch metal layers.
Cycle time: immersion vs. EUV.
Due to the immersion tools being faster presently, multipatterning is still used on most layers. On the layers requiring immersion quad-patterning, the layer completion throughput by EUV is comparable. On the other layers, immersion would be more productive at completing the layer even with multipatterning.
7 nm process nodes and process offerings.
The naming of process nodes by different major manufacturers (TSMC, Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries) is partially marketing-driven and not directly related to any measurable distance on a chip for example TSMC's 7 nm node is similar in some key dimensions to Intel's 10 nm node (see transistor density, gate pitch and metal pitch in the following table). Nevertheless, as of 2017, the technological race to the greatest density was still competitive between the main players, with TSMC, Samsung, and Intel all holding leading positions between the years 2016 and 2017 when measured by the smallest feature size on chip.
Since EUV implementation at 7 nm is still limited, multipatterning still plays an important part in cost and yield; EUV adds extra considerations. The resolution for most critical layers is still determined by multiple patterning. For example, for Samsung's 7 nm, even with EUV single-patterned 36 nm pitch layers, 44 nm pitch layers would still be quadruple patterned.
GlobalFoundries' 7 nm 7LP (Leading Performance) process would have offered 40% higher performance or 60%+ lower power with a 2x scaling in density and at a 30-45+% lower cost per die over its 14 nm process. The Contacted Poly Pitch (CPP) would have been 56 nm and the Minimum Metal Pitch (MMP) would have been 40 nm, produced with Self-Aligned Double Patterning (SADP). A 6T SRAM cell would have been 0.269 square microns in size. GlobalFoundries planned to eventually use EUV lithography in an improved process called 7LP+. GlobalFoundries later stopped all 7 nm and beyond process development.
Intel has not revealed details about its 7 nm process, but its transistor density has been estimated to be around 202-250 million transistors per square millimeter. As of 2020, Intel is experiencing problems with its 7 nm process to the point of outsourcing production of its Ponte Vecchio GPUs. Intel's process has faced repeated delays, with mass production now expected in 2023.
7 nm design rule management in volume production.
The 7 nm metal patterning currently practiced by TSMC involves self-aligned double patterning (SADP) lines with cuts inserted within a cell on a separate mask as needed to reduce cell height. However, self-aligned quad patterning (SAQP) is used to form the fin, the most important factor to performance. Design rule checks also allow via multi-patterning to be avoided, and provide enough clearances for cuts that only one cut mask is needed.


Golden State Exams

The Golden State Exams (GSEs) were a family of exams that were administered to qualifying high achieving students in California during the mid 1980s through the early 2000s. The GSEs were designed based on California's curriculum framework. They were authorized in 1983 by Senate Bill 813. The first exams began being offered in 1987. Those who performed well on the exams earned one of the following awards: Recognition, Honors, or High Honors. Collectively, these awards were formally known as the Academic Excellence Awards. The exams were known for their rigorous nature. Each exam could only be taken once. The following is a timeline of when the various Golden State Exams began being offered:
There was one year (1995) when the only state testing administered in California was that to the high achieving individuals that qualified for the Golden State Exams. In 1998, high school comprehensive exams in "High School Reading/Literature" and "High School Math" became available to all students and school districts under the GSE banner. These two comprehensive exams were later integrated and absorbed into the California Standards Tests (CSTs). In 2003, the GSE subject tests were discontinued due to budget cuts.
Academic Excellence Awards.
Students who received a Recognition, Honors, or High Honors Academic Excellence Award received a certificate award and a notation on their transcript specifying the level of achievement. Those who received Honors or High Honors were additionally given gold seals on their diploma specifying the level of achievement. Results for the 1993 Chemistry Golden State Exam provide an example of the scoring distribution. Of the total population of California high school students in 1993, including 1,424,094 public high school students, only 30,429 qualified for and took the 1993 Chemistry Golden State Exam. Of those 30,429 students, 1,167 (4%) earned High Honors, 1,950 (6%) earned Honors, and 6,922 (23%) earned Recognition.


Marc Miance

²
Marc Miance (born 6 September 1976 in Meulan, France) is a film and television producer. He is the founder and CEO of Alkymia since 2010. He produced animated feature films such as "Renaissance" (2006) and "" (2015).
Biography.
Marc Miance was born in Meulan, in the suburbs of Paris. He developed an interest in computer-generated imagery (CGI) and video games at an early age. He studied at the ESRA school of cinema where he specialized in computer graphics, but dropped out after 2 years. He started to develop new techniques to create black and white CGI movies (Project BW).
In 2000, Marc Miance co-founded Attitude Studio, a production company specialized in film animations. Attitude Studio created Eve Solal, an entirely computer-generated realistic character who was intended to star in films, TV shows, and video-games. Attitude Studio innovated by developing an "emotion mapper" for the Eve Solal character, i.e. sets of body movements for each emotion triggered to make the animation less stiff, more human-like. He sold Eve Solal to the telecom company Orange for 1 billion francs the same year that it launched, in 2000. The following year, he showcased Eve Solal to ACM's Siggraph.
From 2003 to 2005, he worked on several video game animations including Eidos’ ' and Atari’s '. In 2004, inspired by Frank Miller’s "Sin City", he created the visual concept of the black-and-white sci-fi animation film "Renaissance", directed by Christian Volckman, and was in charge of the animation. Still in 2005, he co-founded the production company Let'So Ya with Isabelle Miance (spouse) and Sandrine de Sacy. Attitude Studio, now equipped with a 3,500m² motion capture studio near Paris, led a 4-million euro round of investment in 2008, and closed its operations in April 2009.
In 2010, Marc Miance became the executive producer of released in 2015 and starring Jamel Debbouze, the first European picture to be entirely filmed using motion capture. In 2010, Marc Miance also created the company Alkymia specialized in computer graphics and motion-animated technologies, a company which was instrumental to develop the technology for the movie "Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape", including a 500-gram headset to capture the facial expressions of the actors.
In 2019, Miance and Indian producer Anish Mulani launched the mobile browser Popshot. In 2020, they focused the application on user privacy and renamed it Wave.


Pulses per second


Apparent temperature

Apparent temperature is the temperature equivalent perceived by humans, caused by the combined effects of air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. The measure is most commonly applied to the perceived outdoor temperature. Apparent temperature was invented by Robert Steadman who published a paper about it in 1984. However, it also applies to indoor temperatures, especially saunas and when houses and workplaces are not sufficiently heated or cooled.
Since there is no direct measurement of solar radiation in U.S. observation systems, and solar radiation can add up to to the apparent temperature, commercial weather companies have attempted to develop their own proprietary apparent temperature systems, including The Weather Company's "FeelsLike" and AccuWeather's "RealFeel." These systems, while their exact mechanisms are trade secrets, are believed to estimate the effect of solar radiation based on the available meteorological data that is reported (such as UV index and cloud cover).


Chondrometer

A chondrometer is a measuring instrument designed to determine the bulk density of grain. Grain density is measured in kilograms per hectolitre (Imp. pounds per bushel). It is thus also referred to as the hectolitre mass.
Purpose.
Density is a guide to wheat quality and determines the price and the space required to store and transport the crop.
Description.
A chondrometer consists of a filling hopper, a measuring container, a straightedge, a weighing instrument. The filling hopper allows the grain to fall into the measuring container in a reproducible pattern as several measurements are taken, and all readings need to be within a strict degree of accuracy. The measuring cylinder has flat top edge to it can levelled using the straightedge (a strickle) to give a set volume. Today, the measuring instrument can be a set of digital scales with an accuracy greater than 0.1 g, though in the past it was a steelyard balance with the measuring cylinder hooking directly onto the scales.


Upsilon Piscium

Upsilon Piscium is a solitary, white-hued star in the zodiac constellation of Pisces. It is faintly visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of +4.75. Based upon an annual parallax shift of as seen from Earth, it is located about 308 light years from the Sun. The star is drifting further away with a heliocentric radial velocity of +6 km/s.
This is an ordinary A-type main sequence star with a stellar classification of A3 V. It is 461 million years old – about 98% of the way through its main sequence lifetime – and is spinning with a projected rotational velocity of 91 km/s. The star has 2.8 times the mass of the Sun, about 2.2 times the Sun's radius, and is radiating 117 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 9183 K.
Naming.
υ Piscium is the Bayer designation for this star, which is Latinized as Upsilon Piscium. It has the Flamsteed designation 90 Piscium.
In Chinese, (), meaning "Legs (asterism)", refers to an asterism composed of υ Piscium, η Andromedae, 65 Piscium, ζ Andromedae, ε Andromedae, δ Andromedae, π Andromedae, ν Andromedae, μ Andromedae, β Andromedae, σ Piscium, τ Piscium, 91 Piscium, φ Piscium, χ Piscium and ψ¹ Piscium. Consequently, the Chinese name for υ Piscium itself is (, .)


Bifilar sundial

A bifilar dial is a type of sundial invented by the German mathematician Hugo Michnik in 1922. It has two non-touching threads parallel to the dial. Usually the second thread is orthogonal-(perpendicular) to the first.
The intersection of the two threads' shadows gives the local apparent time.
When the threads have the correctly calculated separation, the hour-lines on the horizontal surface are uniformly drawn. The angle between successive hour-lines is constant. The hour-lines for successive hours are 15 degrees apart.
History.
The bifilar dial was invented in April 1922 by the mathematician and maths teacher, Hugo Michnik, from Beuthen, Upper Silesia. He studied the horizontal dial- starting on a conventional XYZ cartesian framework and building up a general projection which he states was an exceptional case of a Steiner transformation. He related the trace of the sun to conic sections and the angle on the dial-plate to the hour angle and the calculation of local apparent time, using conventional hours and the historic Italian and Babylonian hours. He refers in the paper, to a previous publication on the theory of sundials in 1914.
His method has been applied to vertical near-declinant dials, and a more general declining-reclining dial.
Work has been subsequently done by Dominique Collin.
Horizontal bifilar dial.
This was the dial that Hugo Michnik invented and studied. By simplifying the general example so:
the shadow is thrown on a dial-plate marked out like a simple equatorial sundial.
The proof.
The first wire formula_2 is orientated north-south at a constant distance formula_3 from the dial plate formula_4

The second wire formula_5 is orientated east-west at a constant distance formula_6 from the dial plate formula_4 (thus formula_5 is orthogonal to formula_2 which lies on the plane of the meridian ).
In this proof formula_10 (pronounced phi) is the latitude of the dial plate.
Respectively, formula_11 and formula_12 are the vertical projections of wires formula_2 and formula_5 on the dial plate formula_4.
Point formula_16 is the point on the dial plate directly under the two wires' intersection.
 That point is the origin of the X,Y co-ordinate system referred to below.
The X-axis is the east–west line passing through the origin. The Y-axis is the north–south line passing through the origin. The positive Y direction is northward.
One can show that if the position of the sun is known and determined by the spherical coordinates formula_17 et formula_18 (pronounced t-dot and delta, respectively the known as the hour angle et declination), the co-ordinates formula_19 and formula_20 of point formula_21, the intersection on the two shadows on the dial-plate formula_4 have values of :
Eliminating the variable formula_18 in the two preceding equations, one obtains a new equation defined for formula_19 and formula_20 which gives, as a function of the latitude formula_10 and the solar hour angle solaire formula_17, the equation of the trace of the sun associated with the local apparent time. In its simplest form this equation is written:
This relation shows that the hour traces are indeed line segments and the meeting-point of these line segments is the point formula_30:
In other words, point C is south of point O (where the wires intersect), by a distance of codice_3, where formula_10 is the latitude.
If one arranges the two wire heights formula_6 and formula_3 such :
then the equation for the hour lines can be simply written as:
at all times, the intersection formula_21 of the shadows on the dial plate formula_4 is such that the angle formula_41 is equal to the hour angle formula_17 of the sun so thus represents solar time.
So provided the sundial respects the la condition formula_1 the trace of the sun corresponds to the hour-angle shown by lines (rays) centred on the point formula_30 and the 13 rays that correspond to the hours 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00... 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00 are regularly spaced at a constant angle of 15°, about point C.
A practical example.
A London dial is the name given to dials set for 51° 30' N. A simple London bifilar dial has a dial plate with 13 line segments drawn outward from a centre-point C, with each hour's line drawn 15° clockwise from the previous hour's line. The midday line is aligned towards the north.
The north–south wire is 10 cm (formula_45) above the midday line. That east-west wire is placed at a height of 7.826 (formula_46) centimeters- equivalent to 10 cm x sin(51° 30'). This passes through C. The east–west wire crosses the north–south wire 6.275 cm north of the centre-point C- that being the equivalent of - 7.826 (formula_46) divided by tan (51° 30').
Reclining-declining bifilar sundials.
Whether a sundial is a bifilar, or whether it's the familiar flat-dial with a straight style (like the usual horizontal and vertical-declining sundials), making it reclining, vertical-declining, or reclining-declining is exactly the same. The declining or reclining-declining mounting is achieved in exactly the same manner, whether the dial is bifilar, or the usual straight-style flat dial.
For any flat-dial, whether bifilar, or ordinary straight-style, the north celestial pole has a certain altitude, measured from the plane of the dial.


772 Tanete

772 Tanete is an asteroid from the asteroid belt. Since 2004 it has been observed in stellar occultation four times. Its size is best described by an ellipsoid measuring x . Analysis of a light curve captured during 2014 shows a synodic rotation period of with an amplitude of 0.15 magnitude.
In 1984, a fly-by of 772 Tanete was considered for a Mariner Mark II rendezvous mission with the short period comet 22P/Kopff.


Dual Plover

Dual Plover is a pioneering independent Australian record label, founded in Sydney in 1996, notable for discovering some of the most enigmatic artists in experimental music.
Founded by Lucas Abela and Swerve Harris, Dual Plover are concerned with releasing audio works by people whose work is outside of current trends, be it pop trends or the so-called avant-garde music trends. Dual Plover's first release 'a kombi - music to drive-by' consisted of recordings from a Volkswagen Kombi van originally recorded at picturesque Waverley Cemetery in September 1994.
From 1996 onwards they have also been manufacturing CDs and DVDs as well as touring artists such as Kevin Blechdom, Al Duval and many others, both in their native Australia as well as internationally.


Equivalent Forced Outage Rate


Sendfile

In computing, sendfile is a command which can be found in a number of contexts relating to data transmission:


Software aging

In software engineering, software aging refers to all software's tendency to fail, or cause a system failure after running continuously for a certain time, or because of ongoing changes in systems surrounding the software. Software aging has several causes, including the inability of old software to adapt to changing needs or changing technology platforms, and the tendency of software patches to introduce further errors. As the software gets older it becomes less well-suited to its purpose and will eventually stop functioning as it should. Rebooting or reinstalling the software can be seen as a short term fix. A proactive fault management method to deal with the software aging incident is software rejuvenation. This method can be classified as an environment diversity technique that usually is implemented through software rejuvenation agents (SRA).
The phenomenon was first identified by David Parnas, in an essay that explored what to do about it:
"Programs, like people, get old. We can't prevent aging, but we can understand its causes, take steps to limit its effects, temporarily reverse some of the damage it has caused, and prepare for the day when the software is no longer viable."
From both an academic and industrial point of view, the software aging phenomenon has increased. Recent research has focussed on clarifying its causes and effects. Memory bloating and leaking, along with data corruption and unreleased file-locks are particular causes of software aging.
Proactive management of software aging.
Software aging.
Software failures are a more likely cause of unplanned systems outages compared to hardware failures. This is because software exhibits over time an increasing failure rate due to data corruption, numerical error accumulation and unlimited resource consumption. In widely used and specialized software, a common action to clear a problem is rebooting because aging occurs due to the complexity of software which is never free of errors. It is almost impossible to fully verify that a piece of software is bug-free. Even high-profile software such as Windows and macOS must receive continual updates to improve performance and fix bugs. Software development tends to be driven by the need to meet release deadlines rather than to ensure long-term reliability. Designing software that can be immune to aging is difficult. Not all software will age at the same rate as some users use the system more intensively than others.
Rejuvenation.
To prevent crashes or degradation software rejuvenation can be employed proactively as inevitable aging leads to failures in software systems. This proactive technique was identified as a cost-effective solution during research at the AT&T Bell Laboratories on fault-tolerant software in the 1990s. Software rejuvenation works by removing accumulated error conditions and freeing up system resources, for example by flushing operating system kernel tables, using garbage collection, reinitializing internal data structures, and perhaps the most well known rejuvenation method is to reboot the system.
There are simple techniques and complex techniques to achieve rejuvenation. The method most individuals are familiar with is the hardware or software reboot. A more technical example would be the web server software Apache's rejuvenation method. Apache implements one form of rejuvenation by killing and recreating processes after serving a certain number of requests.
Another technique is to restart virtual machines running in a cloud computing environment.
The multinational telecommunications corporation AT&T has implemented software rejuvenation in the real time system collecting billing data in the United States for most telephone exchanges.
Some systems which have employed software rejuvenation methods include:
The IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) hosted the 5th annual International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation (woSAR) in 2013. Topics included:
Memory leaks.
In systems that use an OS user programs have to request memory blocks in order to perform an operation. After this operation (e.g. a subroutine) is completed, the program is expected to free up all the memory blocks allocated for it in order to make it available to other programs for use. In programming languages without a garbage collector (e.g. C and C++) it's up to the programmer to call the necessary memory releasing functions and to account for all the unused data within the program. However this doesn't always happen. Due to software bugs the program might consume more and more memory eventually causing the system to run out of memory. In low memory conditions, the system usually functions slower due to the performance bottleneck caused by intense swapping (thrashing), applications become unresponsive and those that request large amounts of memory unexpectedly may crash. In case the system runs out of both memory and swap even the OS might crash causing the whole system to reboot.
Programs written in programming languages that use a garbage collector (e.g. Java) usually rely on this feature for avoiding memory leaks. Thus the "aging" of these programs is at least partially dependent on the quality of the garbage collector built into the programming language's runtime environment itself.
Sometimes critical components of the OS itself can be a source of memory leaks and be the main culprit behind system stability issues. In Microsoft Windows, for example, the memory use of Windows Explorer plug-ins and long-lived processes such as services can impact the reliability of the system to the point of making it unusable. A reboot might be needed to make the system work again.
Software rejuvenation helps with memory leaks as it forces all the memory used by an application to be released. The application can be restarted but starts with a clean slate.
Implementation.
Two methods for implementing rejuvenation are:
Memory bloating.
Garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management whereby the system automatically recovers unused memory. For example, the .NET Framework manages the allocation and release of memory for software running under it. But automatically tracking these objects takes time and is not perfect.
.NET based web services manage several logical types of memory such as stack, unmanaged and managed heap (free space). As the physical memory gets full, the OS writes rarely used parts of it to disk, so that it can reallocate it to another application, a process known as paging or swapping. But if the memory does need to be used, it must be reloaded from disk. If several applications are all making large demands, the OS can spend much of its time merely moving data between main memory and disk, a process known as disk thrashing. Since the garbage collector has to examine all of the allocations to decide which are in use, it may exacerbate this thrashing. As a result, extensive swapping can lead to garbage collection cycles extended from milliseconds to tens of seconds. This results in usability problems.


Software inspection

Inspection in software engineering, refers to peer review of any work product by trained individuals who look for defects using a well defined process. An inspection might also be referred to as a Fagan inspection after Michael Fagan, the creator of a very popular software inspection process.
Introduction.
An inspection is one of the most common sorts of review practices found in software projects. The goal of the inspection is to identify defects. Commonly inspected work products include software requirements specifications and test plans. In an inspection, a work product is selected for review and a team is gathered for an inspection meeting to review the work product. A moderator is chosen to moderate the meeting. Each inspector prepares for the meeting by reading the work product and noting each defect. In an inspection, a defect is any part of the work product that will keep an inspector from approving it. For example, if the team is inspecting a software requirements specification, each defect will be text in the document which an inspector disagrees with.
Inspection process.
The inspection process was developed in the mid-1970s and it has later been extended and modified.
The process should have entry criteria that determine if the inspection process is ready to begin. This prevents unfinished work products from entering the inspection process. The entry criteria might be a checklist including items such as "The document has been spell-checked".
The stages in the inspections process are: Planning, Overview meeting, Preparation, Inspection meeting, Rework and Follow-up. The Preparation, Inspection meeting and Rework stages might be iterated.
The process is ended by the moderator when it satisfies some predefined exit criteria.
The term inspection refers to one of the most important elements of the entire process that surrounds the execution and successful completion of a software engineering project.
Inspection roles.
During an inspection the following roles are used.
Related inspection types.
Code review.
A code review can be done as a special kind of inspection in which the team examines a sample of code and fixes any defects in it. In a code review, a defect is a block of code which does not properly implement its requirements, which does not function as the programmer intended, or which is not incorrect but could be improved (for example, it could be made more readable or its performance could be improved). In addition to helping teams find and fix bugs, code reviews are useful both for cross-training programmers on the code being reviewed and for helping junior developers learn new programming techniques.
Peer reviews.
Peer reviews are considered an industry best-practice for detecting software defects early and learning about software artifacts. Peer Reviews are composed of software walkthroughs and software inspections and are integral to software product engineering activities. A collection of coordinated knowledge, skills, and behaviors facilitates the best possible practice of Peer Reviews. The elements of Peer Reviews include the structured review process, standard of excellence product checklists, defined roles of participants, and the forms and reports.
Software inspections are the most rigorous form of Peer Reviews and fully utilize these elements in detecting defects. Software walkthroughs draw selectively upon the elements in assisting the producer to obtain the deepest understanding of an artifact and reaching a consensus among participants. Measured results reveal that Peer Reviews produce an attractive return on investment obtained through accelerated learning and early defect detection. For best results, Peer Reviews are rolled out within an organization through a defined program of preparing a policy and procedure, training practitioners and managers, defining measurements and populating a database structure, and sustaining the roll out infrastructure.


Sun-synchronous orbit

A sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is an orbit arranged so that it precesses through one complete revolution each year, so it always maintains the same relationship with the Sun. A Sun-synchronous orbit is useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites, because every time that the satellite is overhead, the surface illumination angle on the planet underneath it will be nearly the same.
Applications.
A Sun-synchronous orbit is useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites, because every time that the satellite is overhead, the surface illumination angle on the planet underneath it will be nearly the same. This consistent lighting is a useful characteristic for satellites that image the Earth's surface in visible or infrared wavelengths, such as weather and spy satellites; and for other remote-sensing satellites, such as those carrying ocean and atmospheric remote-sensing instruments that require sunlight. For example, a satellite in Sun-synchronous orbit might ascend across the equator twelve times a day each time at approximately 15:00 mean local time.
Special cases of the Sun-synchronous orbit are the noon/midnight orbit, where the local mean solar time of passage for equatorial latitudes is around noon or midnight, and the dawn/dusk orbit, where the local mean solar time of passage for equatorial latitudes is around sunrise or sunset, so that the satellite rides the terminator between day and night. Riding the terminator is useful for active radar satellites, as the satellites' solar panels can always see the Sun, without being shadowed by the Earth. It is also useful for some satellites with passive instruments that need to limit the Sun's influence on the measurements, as it is possible to always point the instruments towards the night side of the Earth. The dawn/dusk orbit has been used for solar-observing scientific satellites such as Yohkoh, TRACE, Hinode and PROBA2, affording them a nearly continuous view of the Sun.
Orbital precession.
A Sun-synchronous orbit is achieved by having the osculating orbital plane precess (rotate) approximately one degree eastward each day with respect to the celestial sphere to keep pace with the Earth's movement around the Sun. This precession is achieved by tuning the inclination to the altitude of the orbit (see Technical details) such that Earth's equatorial bulge, which perturbs inclined orbits, causes the orbital plane of the spacecraft to precess with the desired rate. The plane of the orbit is not fixed in space relative to the distant stars, but rotates slowly about the Earth's axis.
Typical Sun-synchronous orbits around Earth are about 600–800 km in altitude, with periods in the 96–100-minute range, and inclinations of around 98°. This is slightly retrograde compared to the direction of Earth's rotation: 0° represents an equatorial orbit, and 90° represents a polar orbit.
Sun-synchronous orbits are possible around other oblate planets, such as Mars. A satellite orbiting a planet such as Venus that is almost spherical will need an outside push to maintain a Sun-synchronous orbit.
Technical details.
The angular precession per orbit for an Earth orbiting satellite is given by
where
An orbit will be Sun-synchronous when the precession rate equals the mean motion of the Earth about the Sun, which is 360° per sidereal year (), so we must set , where is the orbital period.
As the orbital period of a spacecraft is
where is the semi-major axis of the orbit and is the standard gravitational parameter of the planet ( for Earth); as for a circular or almost circular orbit, it follows that
or when is 360° per year,
As an example, for = (the spacecraft about 800 km over the Earth surface) one gets with this formula a Sun-synchronous inclination of 98.696°.
Note that according to this approximation equals −1 when the semi-major axis equals , which means that only smaller orbits can be Sun-synchronous. The period can be in the range from 88 minutes for a very low orbit ( = , = 96°) to 3.8 hours ( = , but this orbit would be equatorial with = 180°). A period longer than 3.8 hours may be possible by using an eccentric orbit with < but > .
If one wants a satellite to fly over some given spot on Earth every day at the same hour, it can do between 7 and 16 orbits per day, as shown in the following table. (The table has been calculated assuming the periods given. The orbital period that should be used is actually slightly longer. For instance, a retrograde equatorial orbit that passes over the same spot after 24 hours has a true period about ≈ 1.0027 times longer than the time between overpasses. For non-equatorial orbits the factor is closer to 1.)
When one says that a Sun-synchronous orbit goes over a spot on the Earth at the same "local time" each time, this refers to mean solar time, not to apparent solar time. The Sun will not be in exactly the same position in the sky during the course of the year (see Equation of time and Analemma).
Sun-synchronous orbits are mostly selected for Earth observation satellites, with an altitude typically between 600 and over the Earth surface. Even if an orbit remains Sun-synchronous, however, other orbital parameters such as argument of periapsis and the orbital eccentricity will evolve, due to higher order perturbations in the Earth's gravitational field, the pressure of sunlight, and other causes. Earth observation satellites, in particular, prefer orbits with constant altitude when passing over the same spot. Careful selection of eccentricity and location of perigee reveals specific combinations where the perturbations largely cancel and hence the orbit is relatively stable – a frozen orbit. The ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat of European Space Agency, as well as the MetOp spacecraft of EUMETSAT and RADARSAT-2 of the Canadian Space Agency, are all operated in such Sun-synchronous frozen orbits.


2378 Pannekoek


Chromatic diesis


Imaging spectroscopy

In imaging spectroscopy (also hyperspectral imaging or spectral imaging) each pixel of an image acquires many bands of light intensity data from the spectrum, instead of just the three bands of the RGB color model. More precisely, it is the simultaneous acquisition of spatially coregistered images in many spectrally contiguous bands.
Some spectral images contain only a few image planes of a spectral data cube, while others are better thought of as full spectra at every location in the image. For example, solar physicists use the spectroheliograph to make images of the Sun built up by scanning the slit of a spectrograph, to study the behavior of surface features on the Sun; such a spectroheliogram may have a spectral resolution of over 100,000 (formula_1) and be used to measure local motion (via the Doppler shift) and even the magnetic field (via the Zeeman splitting or Hanle effect) at each location in the image plane. The multispectral images collected by the Opportunity rover, in contrast, have only four wavelength bands and hence are only a little more than 3-color images.
To be scientifically useful, such measurement should be done using an internationally recognized system of units.
One application is spectral geophysical imaging, which allows quantitative and qualitative characterization of the surface and of the atmosphere, using radiometric measurements. These measurements can then be used for unambiguous direct and indirect identification of surface materials and atmospheric trace gases, the measurement of their relative concentrations, subsequently the assignment of the proportional contribution of mixed pixel signals (e.g., the spectral unmixing problem), the derivation of their spatial distribution (mapping problem), and finally their study over time (multi-temporal analysis). The Moon Mineralogy Mapper on Chandrayaan-1 was a geophysical imaging spectrometer.
Background.
In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light could be split up into component colours. The subsequent history of spectroscopy led to precise measurements and provided the empirical foundations for atomic and molecular physics (Born & Wolf, 1999). Significant achievements in imaging spectroscopy are attributed to airborne instruments, particularly arising in the early 1980s and 1990s (Goetz et al., 1985; Vane et al., 1984). However, it was not until 1999 that the first imaging spectrometer was launched in space (the NASA Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS).
Terminology and definitions evolve over time. At one time, >10 spectral bands sufficed to justify the term "imaging spectrometer" but presently the term is seldom defined by a total minimum number of spectral bands, rather by a contiguous (or redundant) statement of spectral bands.
The term hyperspectral imaging is sometimes used interchangeably with imaging spectroscopy. Due to its heavy use in military related applications, the civil world has established a slight preference for using the term imaging spectroscopy.
Unmixing.
Hyperspectral data is often used to determine what materials are present in a scene. Materials of interest could include roadways, vegetation, and specific targets (i.e. pollutants, hazardous materials, etc.). Trivially, each pixel of a hyperspectral image could be compared to a material database to determine the type of material making up the pixel. However, many hyperspectral imaging platforms have low resolution (>5m per pixel) causing each pixel to be a mixture of several materials. The process of unmixing one of these 'mixed' pixels is called hyperspectral image unmixing or simply hyperspectral unmixing.
Models.
A solution to hyperspectral unmixing is to reverse the mixing process. Generally, two models of mixing are assumed: linear and nonlinear.
Linear mixing models the ground as being flat and incident sunlight on the ground causes the materials to radiate some amount of the incident energy back to the sensor. Each pixel then, is modeled as a linear sum of all the radiated energy curves of materials making up the pixel. Therefore, each material contributes to the sensor's observation in a positive linear fashion. Additionally, a conservation of energy constraint is often observed thereby forcing the weights of the linear mixture to sum to one in addition to being positive. The model can be described mathematically as follows:
where formula_3 represents a pixel observed by the sensor, formula_4 is a matrix of material reflectance signatures (each signature is a column of the matrix), and formula_5 is the proportion of material present in the observed pixel. This type of model is also referred to as a simplex.
With formula_5 satisfying the two constraints:
1. Abundance Nonnegativity Constraint (ANC) - each element of x is positive.
2. Abundance Sum-to-one Constraint (ASC) - the elements of x must sum to one.
Non-linear mixing results from multiple scattering often due to non-flat surface such as buildings and vegetation.
Unmixing (Endmember Detection) Algorithms.
There are many algorithms to unmix hyperspectral data each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Many algorithms assume that pure pixels (pixels which contain only one materials) are present in a scene.
Some algorithms to perform unmixing are listed below:
Non-linear unmixing algorithms also exist: support vector machines or analytical neural network.
Probabilistic methods have also been attempted to unmix pixel through Monte Carlo unmixing algorithm.
Abundance Maps.
Once the fundamental materials of a scene are determined, it is often useful to construct an abundance map of each material which displays the fractional amount of material present at each pixel. Often linear programming is done to observed ANC and ASC.
Sensors.
Planned
Current and Past


PCB Piezotronics

PCB Piezotronics is a manufacturer of piezoelectric sensors.
The name "PCB" is abbreviation for "PicoCoulomB" which is technical terminology defining an electrical charge of the type generated by the piezoelectric sensors they manufacture. It is also a registered trademark of the company. "Piezotronics" combines the science of Piezoelectricity and electronics. PCB® manufactures sensors and related instrumentation. Sensors are small electromechanical instruments for the measurement of acceleration, dynamic pressure, force, acoustics, torque, load, strain, shock, vibration and sound.
History.
Founded by Robert W. Lally and James (Jim) F. Lally in 1967, PCB Piezotronics has evolved from a family business to a large company engineering and manufacturing operation, with technical emphasis on the incorporation of integrated circuit-piezoelectric sensor technology. In 1967 the integrated circuit piezoelectric sensor, also known as ICP sensors, incorporated microelectronic circuitry, were developed and marketed.
The 1970s for PCB Piezotronics saw expansion of its standard product offerings, to include other types of sensor technologies. In 1971, the company developed a 100,000 g high-shock, ICP® quartz accelerometer; Impulse Hammers for structural excitation were developed in 1972; and in 1973, the first rugged, industrial-grade ICP® accelerometer was introduced to serve the emerging machinery health monitoring market. Employment grew to 25 employees. By 1975, PCB® had become one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of piezoelectric sensors.
During the 1980s, PCB® continued to develop new products. In 1982, the Structural* Modal Array Sensing System was developed to ease sensor installation and reduce set-up time on larger-scale modal surveys. Modally-Tuned* Impulse Hammers won the IR-100 Award as one of the top 100 technical developments for 1983. The 128-channel Data Harvester was invented in 1984 to provide sensor power and speed modal analysis by offering automatic bank switching capability. In 1986, PCB developed the first commercial quartz shear-structured ICP® accelerometer. Additionally in 1980, PCB® broke ground on of land at 3425 Walden Avenue for its new quartz technology center, a location which it continues to occupy today. The facility doubled in size in 1985, and in 1996 an additional was added. An acre of land to the west of the building was purchased for future expansion and in 1999 a addition was completed.
In 1995, Underwriters Laboratory certified PCB to the International Quality Standard ISO-9001. In January 2002, The American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) recognized PCB with accreditation to ISO 17025, an international standard for assuring technical competence in calibration and testing.
In 2015, Jim Lally was presented the lifetime achievement award at the 86th annual Shock and Vibration Symposium in Orlando. "This award recognized Jim Lally's 60 years of dedication to providing dynamic sensor technology in blast, ballistics, shock, vibration, acoustics, strain, and dynamic force to the SAVE community. It also recognizes both his generous contributions to educational institutions and his professionalism in corporate interactions."
PCB Group, Inc. was acquired by MTS Systems Corporation in July 2016 but retained its president David Hore and all its employees and facilities.
Divisions.
Today the company is organized into various divisions and product groups, and has representation in more than 60 countries worldwide. These divisions include PCB Automotive Sensors, based in Farmington Hills, Michigan; PCB Aerospace & Defense; IMI Sensors; and Larson Davis, based in Depew, NY. PCB product groups include Shock and Vibration; Microphones; Force; Pressure; and Electronics.


Selective school (New South Wales)

Selective schools in New South Wales, Australia are government high schools operated by the New South Wales Department of Education that accept their students based upon their academic merit.
Each year, approximately 15,000 Year 6 students across the state of New South Wales optionally undertake the Selective High Schools Test to seek one of the 3,600 places offered for first-year entry into selective high schools. For Year 8 to Year 12 entry into selective schools, students do not take an external test, however they can apply directly to a school for entry. The application package is standard to all government selective schools, with internal selection committees considering applications each year in August–September.
History.
The first government selective high schools in NSW were established in the late 19th and early 20th century. The selective school system at the turn of the 20th century included both schools newly established as selective schools, and older schools with selective entry that were brought into the system. The oldest selective schools included Bathurst High School, Fort Street High School, Goulburn High School, St. George Girls High School, Sydney Technical High School, Penrith High School and Sydney High School (now Sydney Boys High School and Sydney Girls High School). Many of the oldest selective schools in NSW have always been selective since establishment, including Fort Street (1849), Sydney Boys and Sydney Girls (1883), North Sydney Girls High School (1914), North Sydney Boys High School (1915), Hurlstone Agricultural High School (1959) and James Ruse Agricultural High School (1959).
Before World War II, most of the state's government high schools were selective. In 1957, a government report recommended the conversion of selective schools to comprehensive schools, reflecting changes in education philosophy. As a result, from the early 1960s, most selective schools were converted to comprehensive schools. The conversion was resisted by parents and influential alumni of especially inner-city selective schools such as Fort Street. As a result, a small number of selective schools survived the reforms: Fort Street, Sydney Boys, Sydney Girls, North Sydney Boys, North Sydney Girls, James Ruse and Hurlstone. However, in 1988, the NSW government began increasing the number of selective schools and also made an important reform, abolishing catchment restrictions for selective schools so that any student in NSW could apply to attend any selective school. In 1995, the NSW government under Bob Carr created some partially selective schools (i.e. schools with both comprehensive and selective streams).
In 2010, 14 more comprehensive high schools became partially selective, with one or more classes of selective students, and a "virtual school" bringing together a single class of students from regional NSW.
 there are 47 fully or partially selective government high schools, including 17 fully selective high schools (some of which are co-educational and other provide a single-sex educational environment; 25 partially selective high schools (high schools with both selective and comprehensive classes); four selective agricultural high schools; and one virtual selective high school. Of the 47 school, 34 are located in greater metropolitan Sydney.
The Aurora College is a virtual selective high school that caters for students enrolled in government high schools in rural or remote areas in New South Wales. Virtual classes commenced in January 2015 with over 160 students. The school is managed from administrative offices based in . Aurora allows students in rural and remote areas to remain in their local school and community while studying specialist subjects which their home school cannot currently offer. The College uses a range of technologies to access more fast-paced lessons delivered by video and interact with each other, and attend a residential program held twice per year.
Partially selective schools.
A number of schools have been designated as "partially selective", in that they have self-contained classes to provide for gifted and talented students in the junior years of high school. Often, schools combine selective and comprehensive streams as students enter the senior years, however, in practice, selective students tend to "self-select" into more advanced classes, such as extension units in Mathematics and English.
Admission and criteria.
Profile score.
In general, entry into a government selective school is determined by a "profile score", which is derived by combining school marks in English and mathematics with the marks received in the Selective High Schools Test in reading, writing, mathematics and general ability.
The profile score is computed by adding together component scores for English, mathematics and general ability, each of which are marks out of 100, to form the profile score out of 300.
 the component scores are computed as follows:
Scaling and moderating school and tests marks ensure that:
As For 2021, The NSW government has changed the test type to a 'Cambridge Style' Test.
This includes:
Thinking Skills: This is the predecessor of the then GA, which now has 40 questions in 40 minutes.
Mathematical Reasoning Skills: This is the predecessor of Maths, with 35 questions in 40 minutes.
Reading Skills: This is the predecessor of Reading, with 30 questions in 40 minutes.
Writing: Writing has increased to 30 minutes in time, as well as a different style in the stimulus.
The process also includes 'wild-score' processing which identifies students who, based on their school performance, may have done much worse than expected in the test. Where such students have been identified the moderating process takes this into account and adjusts scores accordingly. This ensures that students will not be disadvantaged by other students who attend the same school and may have done much worse than expected because of serious illness, misadventure or other cause.
Offers.
By early July students receive letters informing them of one of three outcomes concerning their application to each school:
In some cases, an application can be placed on 'hold', meaning it is awaiting the result of further enquiries by the Department of Education.
Other criteria.
Other criteria include age and grade, and current residency status in Australia. This usually requires students to be between 11 years and 5 months and 13 years at the start of the year they wish to commence Year 7, be in Year 6 the year before they wish to enter, and be either a citizen or permanent resident of Australia or a citizen of New Zealand. However, exemptions to some of these requirements may be given in special circumstances or through consultation with the Department of Education.
Debate.
The existence of government selective schools in NSW, which also exist in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, has not been without controversy, with much of it centred on the discrepancies between selective high schools and comprehensive high schools.
A significant dismantling of the selective schools system was proposed by an inquiry in 2002 that was funded by the NSW Parents and Citizens Association and the NSW Teachers Federation. At that time, the report called for the changing of 12 of the state's 19 selective high schools to partially selective high schools, retaining only the seven most established schools: Fort Street, North Sydney Boys', North Sydney Girls', Sydney Boys', Sydney Girls', Sydney Technical, and St George Girls'. The recommendation were justified, from the viewpoint of the inquiry's chair UNSW Professor Tony Vinson, by the fact that 'wherever possible, talented students should be able to remain within mainstream schools to maximise social cohesion and "an inclusive school community"'.
However, although the report had the backing of the then NSW Education Minister John Watkins, most of the Vinson enquiry's recommendations, including most of the recommendations concerning the status of selective schools, were not implemented by the NSW Government. Another report commissioned by the Department of Education, in 2005, drew on consultation with the public across the entire state school system and found that opinions are still polarised on whether they should continue to exist.
The debate has been reignited recently due to a string of articles from "The Sydney Morning Herald" criticising selective schools, with the main argument purporting that they are the cause of much socio-economic divide within Sydney.
In December 2018, the then NSW Minister for Education, Rob Stokes, announced the findings of the Review of Selective Education Access that outlined changes that aim to increase the number of girls, poor and disabled students, and students stronger in English than other subjects, in selective schools. The review found that:


Furlongs per fortnight


English Language Skills Assessment

The English Language Skills Assessment (ELSA) is a group of tests designed to measure English language proficiency of subjects. The test is designed for non-native speakers, with different levels of testing available from beginners to advanced.
The tests can be utilized to track progress among those studying English or to measure proficiency for employment or education where English language skills are required. The tests are intended for an international audience and are available in British English or American English. The tests are utilized by such educational organizations as the Australian Council for Educational Research to help predict student success and are compulsory at The University of the South Pacific. It is used by international businesses such as BASF, Unilever and DaimlerChrysler. Its usage is mandatory in Germany and Poland as part of the re-training programs for unemployed.
FELSA.
A variant of elsa, the Foundational English Language Skills Assessment (FELSA), has been developed for all age groups with a special focus on speakers who correspond to level A1 or A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, who may have slight conversational English language familiarity but would not ordinarily be able to succeed in school, business or travel in English.


Chrony

chrony is an implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP). It's a replacement for the , which is a reference implementation of the NTP. It runs on Unix-like operating systems (including Linux and macOS) and is released under the GNU GPL v2. It's the default NTP client and server in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15, and available in many Linux distributions.
Comparison with the reference implementation.
Unlike , chrony was implemented from scratch. It was designed to synchronize time even in difficult conditions such as intermittent network connections (such as laptops) and congested networks. Unlike , it supports synchronizing the system clock via hardware timestamping, improving accuracy of time synchronization between machines on a LAN. It also supports synchronization by manual input, and can perform time correction within an isolated network.


Xi Phoenicis

Xi Phoenicis, Latinized from ξ Phoenicis, is a visual binary star system in the southern constellation of Phoenix. It is faintly visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 5.70. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 14.61 mas as measured from Earth, it is located around 223 light years from the Sun. The system is moving away from the Sun with a radial velocity of about +10 km/s.
Primary star.
The primary is a chemically peculiar Ap star with a stellar classification of , where the suffix notation indicating the spectrum shows very strong lines of Strontium and Chromium. The star has about double the solar radius and is radiating 17 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 8,300 K. Stellar evolution models indicate its properties are consistent with a mass of 1.91 times the solar mass and an age of 680 million years.
Xi Phoenicis has a strong magnetic field that varies with the stellar rotation period. It can be modeled as a dipolar field with a polar strength of , inclined by 88° in relation to the rotation axis of the star. The reconstruction of the stellar surface by Doppler imaging showed it is heterogenous with regions of different chemical abundances, which seem to be associated to the geometry of the magnetic field. For instance, lithium and oxygen have high abundances in the magnetic poles and low abundances in the magnetic equator, while elements like silicon and lanthanum are concentrated in a region between the magnetic equator and poles. However, these results have been contested, and it is possible the abundance maps are spurious due to the strong magnetic field.
An Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable, Xi Phoenicis's visual magnitude varies between 5.68 and 5.78 with a period of 3.9516 days, which is the rotation period of the star and is also associated with changes in the spectrum and the magnetic field. The brightness variation is maximum in the v band, with an amplitude of 0.13 magnitudes. The light curve in this band is symmetrical and has two distinct minima separated by half a rotation period, while the two maxima are igual. In other bands the variability is smaller or even absent, and doesn't show a regular pattern like in v. The star is similar in many aspects to rapidly oscillating Ap stars, but does not display the rapid pulsations typical of these stars.
Secondary star.
Xi Phoenicis is known as a double star since 1834, the date of the first registered observation in the Washington Double Star Catalogue. The relative position of the two components has remained constant to this day, confirming they have a common proper motion and form a physical binary system. The secondary star has a visual apparent magnitude of 9.95 and in 2007 was located at an angular separation of 13.06 arcseconds and position angle of 252.5°, in relation to the primary. Considering the distance to the system, this corresponds to a projected separation of 875 AU between the stars. The mass of the secondary is estimated at 0.81 times the solar mass.
This star is in the second catalogue of the Gaia spacecraft, which measured independently a distance equal to that of the primary, and estimated a radius of 0.76 , luminosity of 0.33 , and effective temperature of 5,000 K.


Nevada Test and Training Range

The Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) is one of two military training areas at the Nellis Air Force Base Complex in Nevada and used by the United States Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base. The NTTR land area includes a "simulated Integrated Air Defense System", several individual ranges with 1200 targets, and 4 remote communication sites. The current NTTR area and the range's former areas have been used for aerial gunnery and bombing, for nuclear tests, as a proving ground and flight test area, for aircraft control and warning, and for Blue Flag, Green Flag, and Red Flag exercises.
Geography.
The Nevada Test and Training Range land area is mostly Central Basin and Range ecoregion (cf. southernmost portion in the Mojave Desert), and smaller ecoregions (e.g., Tonopah Basin, Tonopah Playa, & Bald Mountain biomes) are within the area of numerous basin and range landforms of the NTTR.
Landforms.
The NTTR is at the serpentine section of the Great Basin Divide in southern Nevada and uses numerous landforms for military operations, e.g., Groom Lake near the northeast NTTR border is the airstrip for Area 51, the 1955 Site II west of the lake's WWII field. Tolicha Peak and Point Bravo are the sites of for electronic combat ranges, and the Mercury Valley is the eponym for a Cold War camp that became Mercury, Nevada. The Tonopah Test Range, within the boundaries of the NTTR (e.g., "Nellis Range 75") includes Antelope Lake, Radar Hill, and the "Cactus, Antelope, and Silverbow Springs".
Northern Range.
The "Northern Range" includes the Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range (TPECR, e.g., Range 76 targets 76-03, -05, -11, & -14) and Tonopah Electronic Combat Range (the Wildhorse Management Area encircled by the Northern Range is not part of the NTTR.)
Eastman Airfield Target.
The Eastman Airfield Target (Target 76-14, Korean Airfield, ) is a Range 76 target northwest of the TPECR. The target has a northeastern taxiway loop, characteristic for the former Soviet Air Force base at Jüterbog Airfield in East Germany, and three ramps in front of hangars on the western side of the loop. The other taxiways have a similar layout to Jüterbog, although the runway is about shorter. There are two accompanying SAM sites, one northwest of the airfield, and one northwest just like the original.
Southern Range.
The Southern Range includes the Point Bravo Electronic Combat Range. An area of about of the Southern Range that was withdrawn from the Desert National Wildlife Range is co-managed by the USAF and the USFWS.
Nearby facilities.
In addition to Nellis AFB, areas outside of the current NTTR land area are used for related activities, e.g., about of the former military range land (relinquished 1942, e.g. ranges 46-56, and ) is under the Nellis "Area A" airspace that is a Military Operations Area (MOA). The Formerly Used Defense Site north and northeast of the NTTR with "Stone Cabin, Hot Creek, Railroad, Tikaboo, and Sand Spring valleys" is a "former portion of the Tonopah Bombing Range", includes "Permit Required Confined space", and prohibits vehicles in "suspected ordnance impact area[s]" (e.g., "green markings" indicate chemical agents). Most areas adjacent to the NTTR are managed by the Bureau of Land Management for limited non-residential use such as grazing. Temporary sites, e.g., for Patriot Communications Exercises (about "21 days per exercise"), are in the "ADA activity area" east of the NTTR with 13 empty "500 feet by 500 feet" sites for mobile electronic equipment on BLM land in the "Sand Springs Valley, Coal Valley, Delamar Valley, and Dry Lake Valley" ("general area" of the Key Pittman WMA) and "under MOA airspace".
History.
"Tertiary age" lava flows formed 5 erupted groups in the area, and block faulting such as the Siebert and Mizpah faults formed the ranges and valleys. Precambrian and Paleozoic marine sediments form an "almost uniform thickness of 40,000 feet", and surface geology is "typically the Cenozoic Era continental deposits and some Paleogene volcanic rocks". Located at the southern tip of the Great Basin tribes area, the eventual range area was crossed by the Old Spanish Trail (trade route), was south of the Pony Express route, and was split by the 37th parallel north of the 1850 New Mexico & 1863 Arizona territories' northwest corner. In the 1930s the land had been used as an Animal Sanctuary where the Department of the Interior made it a wildlife reservation. However, in 1942 during World War II the region restricted it from public access for the War Department to use. The original bombing range had been used for the 1900–1921 silver rush (e.g., Tonopah Mining District & Tonopah Manhattan Stage Route), and the region was subdivided into smaller numbered management areas (e.g., Area 2, Area 5, Area 11, Area 12, Area 25, Area 27, Area 52), which are used for names of some of the range installations (e.g., "Area 3 Compound" and "Area 51" for "Groom Lake Field").
Tonopah Bombing Range.
The Tonopah Bombing Range was designated on federal land "withdrawn ... October 29, 1940, from the public domain" and in June 1941, the "Tonopah Gunnery and Bombing Range" was split at "37 degrees and 30 minutes" latitude into the "Tonopah General Range" and "Las Vegas General Range". On October 28, 1941, "United States v. 1,855,720 Acres of land ..." (US Fifth District) was initiated to seize private land, and in July 1942 the Fourth Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range Detachment from "Muroc Lake" arrived as the 1st unit. Several Nevada World War II Army Airfields were established, e.g., the August 1942 Tonopah Army Air Field in the north area and in the south, Indian Springs Auxiliary Army Airfield and its additional fields, e.g., at Area 18 (Aux. Field#4) and Area 51 (Aux. Field#1). In February 1943, Indian Springs AAF was being used for the 82d Flying Training Wing for air-to-air gunnery training, and Indian Springs AAF closed in January 1947. In June 1947 Tonopah AAF was declared excess along with its 3 auxiliary areas (Mizpah and Butler housing terraces and Columbia Junction gasoline unloading station). The Indian Springs main facility re-opened in January 1948 and on June 13, 1949, Air Training Command merged the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range and the Tonopah Bombing and Gunnery Range. On June 28, 1949, the "Gunnery Range of the Tonopah Air Force Base" had about and after the 1949 Las Vegas Air Force Base was renamed on April 30, 1950, an Atomic Energy Commission committee selected the for a nuclear test site on December 12, 1950. The land was ideal for training aerial gunners because the land was far from people and contained dry lake beds, which worked perfectly for target practices.
Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range.
A 680-square mile section of the Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range was designated the Nevada Proving Grounds (NPG) on December 18, 1950. The new NPG included "Yucca and Frenchman Flats, Paiute and Rainier Mesas". The presidential order also established Groom Lake Field (colloq. "The Pig Farm") at the WWII installation. The first NPG nuclear test was for Operation Ranger on January 27, 1951, and the Indian Springs main facility (renamed an Air Force Base in 1951) supported NPG testing after ARDC General Order No. 39 on July 16, 1952. The NPG "military support facility" (now the private Desert Rock Airport) operated September 1951-October 7, 1957 (electricity was from AEC's Camp Mercury) and closed June 18, 1964. In 1955 on the southwest corner of Groom Lake, a survey team laid out the 5,000-foot (1,500 m) north–south "Site II" runway for Project AQUATONE. The 1st Lockheed U-2 (Article 341) left the Skunk Works in a C-124 cargo plane for the AQUATONE site in July 1955 and first flew on July 29 during a runway test. The Tonopah Test Range (TTR) land was withdrawn from public use in 1956 to replace nuclear test sites at the "Salton Sea Test Base" and the Yucca Flat site, and in 1957 Sandia Laboratories began TTR operations at Cactus Flat.
From 1956-1969/70, the Las Vegas Air Force Station and Tonopah Air Force Stations provided Reno Air Defense Sector radar tracks and in 1957, the "instrumented AEC range at Tonopah" was used by NAS Fallon and Point Mugu pilots. "A safety experiment (Project 57 No. 1) with ground zero coordinates of N 932646, E 688515 was detonated on April 24, 1957" in "Area 13" at the northeast NTTR boundary. In 1958, the Tonopah Test Range Airport was planned with a single runway of . In 1960, Camp Mercury was a base camp for Project 5.5 that studied nuclear detonation effect on the Northrop F-89D Scorpion (a similar Project 6.5 was for effect of nuclear detonations on the Nike Hercules missile system). A 1961 Public Land Order transferred USAF land to the AEC, and after the 1962 RBS Express #2 near the Hawthorne Naval Ammunition Depot was used for Radar Bomb Scoring of flights over the range, the Hawthorne Bomb Plot radar station operated in Babbitt until . Operation Roller Coaster was a TTR nuclear test series in May and June 1963 and in November and December 1965, B-52 Combat Skyspot testing at the range used the only CONUS AN/MSQ-77 developed for the Vietnam War. Planning to integrate the range with the Fallon and Hill/Wendover/Dugway ranges to create the Great Basin's "Continental Operations Range" ended in 1975, the 1st year for a Nellis range Red Flag exercise.
Nellis Air Force Range.
The Nellis Air Force Range (NAFR) was used to bury wreckage of the 1978 Groom Lake & 1979 NAFR Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk crashes, and additional Cold War accidents at the range included the 1975 NAFR TR-1 crash, the 1979 Tonopah MiG-17 crash during training versus an Northrop F-5, the 1984 Little Skull Mountain MiG-23 crash, which killed a USAF general, and the 1986 NAFR crash, which "Air Force sources" identified as an "F-19" stealth fighter. Circa 1980, NAFR received 806L "Range Threat" systems for electronic warfare simulation and from 1983 to 1985, the area of South Antelope Lake was used for two Tomahawk missile targets. NAFR range operations transferred to the 99th Range Group at the end of the Cold War (the range received various Radar Bomb Scoring electronic systems from Strategic Training Ranges, e.g., Nellis had 5 AN/MSQ-77s by 1994). In 1999 the range's land withdrawal was renewed and the unused portion of the original Tonopah Bombing Range was redesignated a Formerly Used Defense Site.
In 2001, NAFR was renamed the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) and in October 2001, the range group personnel and assets for range operations transferred to the 98th Range Wing. In 2005, Indian Springs AFAF was renamed Creech Air Force Base and in 2010, the NTS was renamed the Nevada National Security Site. The NTTR had four tracts in the 2010 U.S. Census. In 2011, the 98th Range Wing was redesignated with the same name as the range (NTTR).
Area 51 Facebook Raid.
In June 2019, a joke Facebook event was created rallying the public to storm the training range on September 20 that year, saying "Let's see them aliens". Over two million people responded as "going" to the event, with another 1.5 million "interested". The county commission chairman estimated that approximately 40,000 people would turn up on 20 September.
On July 10, speaking with "The Washington Post", Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews said officials were aware of the event, and issued a warning saying that the area was "an open training range for the U.S. Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces", adding: "The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets". A public information officer at Nellis Air Force Base told KNPR that "any attempt to illegally access the area is highly discouraged".


CUSPEA

CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application) was an examination and admission system used by the physics departments of some American and Canadian universities for graduate school admission from People's Republic of China between 1979 and 1989.
It was created by the Chinese-American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee and Chinese physics community as an alternative graduate school admission procedure. At that time in China, higher education was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution; school transcripts and recommendation letters were difficult to evaluate. Furthermore, standardized tests such as the Graduate Record Examination were unavailable in China.
Details.
The CUSPEA exam is in English and has a similar scope to that of Ph.D. written qualifying exams in major American universities. The questions were prepared by physics professors from participating North American universities -- starting with Columbia University where Lee worked, and eventually expanded to 97 universities. Committees of physicists in China administer and grade the exams. The examinees are usually senior physics majors from top-ranking Chinese universities. Those who passed the exam are followed up by an interview by a small American delegation. The final admission depends on mutual agreement between the applicant and participating physics departments.
About 100 Chinese students went to the US every year through the CUSPEA exams, and the total number is 915. Over the years, the three universities with the most students passed the exam are (numbers in the parentheses indicate the numbers of students) University of Science and Technology of China (218), Peking University (206) and Fudan University (127).
Similar Exams.
CUSPEA was so successful that other similar exams soon were created, such as CUSBEA for biochemistry and "Shiing-Shen Chern Project" (陈省身项目) for mathematics. All were stopped in the late 80s in favor of more standard exams.
Continuation as Mini-CUSPEA and Re-Expansion.
In the early 1990s, several years after the suspension of the CUSPEA exam, a new program called Mini-CUSPEA was created. The new program name referred to the fact that only one Chinese university, namely Fudan University, was now involved. Likewise, in the U.S., the number of target universities had been shrunk to three - Columbia University, New York University, and the City University of New York.
Mini-CUSPEA applicants sit written exams and attend interviews, similar in style to the old CUSPEA admission tests. Around 6-10 students are admitted annually. The usual requirements (TOEFL and GRE) for Chinese students studying in the U.S are waived for successful Mini-CUSPEA applicants.
Since 2007, the Mini-CUSPEA program has started to expand. The Chinese universities involved now include Peking University, Tsinghua University and other top universities. Expansion is also planned on the U.S. side.


760 Massinga

760 Massinga ("prov. designation:" "or" ) is a large background asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered by German astronomer Franz Kaiser at the Heidelberg Observatory on 28 August 1913. The stony S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 10.7 hours and is somewhat elongated in shape. It was named in memory of Adam Massinger (1888–1914), a German astronomer at Heidelberg who was killed in World War I.
Orbit and classification.
"Massinga" is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements. It orbits the Sun in the outer asteroid belt at a distance of 2.4–3.9 AU once every 5 years and 7 months (2,039 days; semi-major axis of 3.15 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.23 and an inclination of 13° with respect to the ecliptic.
Discovery.
"Massinga" was discovered by Franz Kaiser at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory in southwest Germany on 28 August 1913. On the same night, it was independently discovered by Russian astronomer Grigory Neujmin at the Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula. The Minor Planet Center, however, only credits Franz Kaiser with the discovery. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg on 8 November 1914, more than a year after its official discovery observation.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Adam Massinger (1888–1914), a German astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at Heidelberg who died in the First Battle of Ypres during World War I on 21 October 1914. An obituary was published by Max Wolf in the astronomical journal "Astronomische Nachrichten". The was mentioned in "The Names of the Minor Planets" by Paul Herget in 1955 ().
Physical characteristics.
In the Tholen classification, "Massinga" is a common, stony S-type asteroid, though with an unusual spectrum (SU), while in the Tholen- and SMASS-like taxonomic variants of the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey (S3OS2), it is an S-type and SL-type, latter which transitions to the uncommon L-type, respectively.
Rotation period.
In December 1999, a rotational lightcurve of "Massinga" was obtained from photometric observations by Robert A. Koff at his observatory in Colorado. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of magnitude (). In March 2006, Laurent Bernasconi and Rui Goncalves determined a similar period of hours and an amplitude of magnitude ().
Diameter and albedo.
According to the surveys carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the Japanese Akari satellite, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, "Massinga" measures (), () and () kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of (), () and (), respectively. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" derives an albedo of 0.2392 and a diameter of 71.47 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 7.9.
On 29 February 2012, an asteroid occultation of "Massinga" gave a best-fit ellipse dimension of (), with a high quality rating of 3. These timed observations are taken when the asteroid passes in front of a distant star.


The Private Life of a Cat

The Private Life of a Cat is a 22-minute 1947 black and white experimental documentary film by Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren.Archive.org summarises that the film is an "intimate study" of a female cat who gives birth to a litter of kittens and shows their maturation.
Synopsis.
The film is entirely silent and shot from the cat's eye-level; "He", an all white short-haired male cat, grooms "She", a fluffier female. After two months they find a spot "for the family", and soon after the mother goes into labour. The film shows graphically the kittens being born without the help of human hands, and then getting nursed and washed by their mother. The kittens grow, and the parent cats roam freely around their owners' apartment (Hammid and Deren). The kittens learn how to walk and begin to get more active, playing with each other and clawing various furniture. The film then ends by showing the same scene from the beginning where "He" courts "She".
Reputation.
Top Documentary Films rates "The Private Life of a Cat" 7.70/10 stars, saying that it is "very touching", and that it is "[b]eautifully photographed and executed. With subtitles, no dialog, and a refreshing absence of human beings on screen." Dangerous Minds wrote "[t]his beautiful 1944 silent film from husband-and-wife team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is quite possibly the only evidence we need that cats are the ultimate well-spring of creativity."


Agnes Berger

Agnes P. Berger (1916-2002) was a Hungarian-American mathematician who served as an associate professor of biostatistics at Columbia University's School of Public Health, as well as a statistical consultant at Mount Sinai.
Early years.
Her first experiences with mathematics were thanks to the Hungarian publication Kömal (Kozepiskolai Matematikai Lapok), a monthly magazine for high school students that included math problems.
During her studies at the University of Budapest, she was a student of the prominent Hungarian mathematician Lipót Fejér, whom she would remember years later for his short, detailed classes and dramatic endings. Her parents were friends with the parents of contemporary mathematician Peter Lax.
She earned her doctorate.
Career.
Berger collaborated with other statisticians such at Jerzy Neyman. She reviewed work of Joseph L. Fleiss, another statistical mathematician.
Family life and last years of life.
Agnes Berger married Laszlo Berger, with whom she had a son, John Joseph Berger. She died at age 85 at Lenox Hill Hospital on March 27, 2002.