Certificate Examinations in Polish as a Foreign Language

The Certificate Examinations in Polish as a Foreign Language (Polish: "Egzaminy Certyfikatowe z Języka Polskiego jako Obcego"), also referred as State Certificate Examinations in Polish as a Foreign Language (Polish: "Państwowe Egzaminy Certyfikatowe z Języka Polskiego jako Obcego"), are standardized tests of Polish language proficiency for non-native Polish speakers. The examinations are held by the State Commission for the Certification of Proficiency in Polish as a Foreign Language (Polish: "Państwowa Komisja Poświadczania Znajomości Języka Polskiego jako Obcego") starting from 2004 in Poland as well as in foreign countries. Candidates passing the examinations would obtain a certificate indicating the level of their proficiency in Polish. There are currently three levels of examinations set according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, namely, B1, B2 and C2. The State Certification Commission is at the meantime working on the introduction of examinations for the remaining levels (A1, A2 and C1).
This is the only state document that could confirm one's proficiency in Polish language.
History.
On 3 July 2003, pursuant to the Language Act, the State Commission for the Certification of Proficiency in Polish as a Foreign Language was established by the Minister of Education, with the aim to setting up a certificate examination for Polish as a foreign language.
The examination was first organized in 2004 in both Poland and abroad.
The standards of examination and rules of procedure are based on the guidelines of the Council of Europe, with the aim of standardizing foreign language proficiency tests across Europe. In 2008, Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) audited the examinations and confirm that they are run according to the guidelines.
Aim.
The chief aim of the examinations is to determine candidates’ level of proficiency in Polish regardless of the institution and location the candidates learn Polish and the adopted curriculum, educational materials and methods of the candidates.
Organization.
The examinations are organized by State Commission for the Certification of Proficiency in Polish as a Foreign Language, which is composed of representatives from major teaching centers teaching Polish as a foreign language. The commission is responsible for setting dates of examinations, appointing examination boards members, developing examinations materials, monitoring examination and issuing certificates to those who have passed the tests.
Examinations are staged at least three times a year in spring, summer and autumn. Currently, only three levels of examination are available. Candidates can sit for the basic (B1), general intermediate (B2) or advanced (C2) examination, the level of which are set according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The state certificate commission is working on the introduction of the remaining levels of examinations.
Requirements of sitting for the exams.
All foreigners and Polish citizens permanently residing abroad may sit for the examination, except that candidates taking the B1 and B2 examinations must be at least 16 years old and those who sit for the C2 examination must age 18 or above.
Candidates having special needs can also apply for the examinations, and special adjustments of form of the examination, like extending the time of examinations or using specialized equipment and technical devices, could be arranged.
Application.
Registration forms could be sent on-line, by fax or mail. A letter of confirmation would be sent to the candidate after the application form has been received. The examination would be staged if there are at least twenty candidates applying to sit the examination at a particular examination center. Examination fees should be paid on or before the deadline shown on the letter of confirmation by bank transfer.
Information about the date and time of the examination would be sent to candidates by e-mail as well as mail.
The examination fees are €60 (B1), €80 (B2) and €100 (C2) respectively. Successful candidates need to pay an additional €20 for their certificate.
Examination.
The examination consists of five sub-tests, divided into two parts, i.e. a written part and an oral part. At all levels, the structure of the written part is the same, varying only in terms of difficulty. The written part comprises Listening Comprehension (Part A), Accuracy/Grammar in Use (Part B), Reading Comprehension (Part C) and Writing (Part D), whereas the oral examination tests only Oral Communication (Part E).
The oral part of the examinations is carried out on the same day or on the next day of the written examinations. Candidates need to make oral statements based on different written and graphic materials. Candidates have to draw one out of three sets of materials in order to determine which set of task they are required to complete. The tasks and duration of the oral part are different for different levels.
Assessment.
Examinations are assessed by examination commissions appointed by the State Commission for the Certification of Proficiency in Polish as a Foreign Language.
Each examination consists of five sub-tests of equal value, with each of the sub-test bearing a maximum of 40 points. The maximum points of the examination is thus 200. In order to pass the examination, a candidate has to score at least 60% of points, i.e. 24 points, in each of five sub-tests.
Every sub-test is assessed by two markers, who check against:
Each marker can give a maximum 20 points, and hence the maximum points for the examinations are 200.
While the marking criteria in Part A, B and C are relatively objective, the marking for writing and oral expression is more subjective. Unavoidable though it is, subjectivity in these sub-tests is limited by the standardization of assessment criteria, double rating and training of examiners.
Examination marks are awarded according to the following scale:
Failed candidates may re-take the examination at the same level after one year. Or, if they find it appropriate, they may launch an appeal to the Commission. Upon the candidate’s request the President of the Commission may allow him to review, in his presence, relevant sub-tests assessed by the examination board.
Certificate.
After six weeks of the examination, the candidates would receive notification about their results. For those who have passed, they would need to pay an extra €20 for the certificate, and the Commission would issue the certificate upon receiving the payment. Candidates would receive their certificate by registered mail.
The certificate is with supplement in English with a detailed description of the results.
Benefits of obtaining the certificate.
According to the provisions of the Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education of 12 October 2006 on taking up and carrying out studies by foreigners, foreign students should have passed the B2 Certificate Examinations in Polish as a Foreign Language in order to be able to study in a Polish school or university, where teaching activities are conducted in Polish. The requirement is looser for artistic and sports-related disciplines (e.g. music, arts, physical education studies) and a B1 basic proficiency in Polish is enough for these subjects.
Besides education, the certificates may also be useful in certain job areas. For instance, the Ministry for Infrastructure, before granting a license for conducting real estate business, requires the submission of a certificate in Polish as a foreign language at C2 level. Employees in health sector would also need to prove their language proficiency — the Chambers of Nurses in Poland require foreigners employed by Polish hospitals and medical centres to have a certificate in Polish as a foreign language at B1 level. According to the Regulation on Civil Service, foreigners applying for jobs in civil service are also required to provide a certificate in Polish as a foreign language at B2 level.
The certificate is gaining popularity among the upper-secondary students in several countries, notably in Germany and the United States. In some countries, the certificate can serve as a document certifying the command of an additional foreign language, which entitles students to obtain additional points during a matriculation examination.


Statistical database

A statistical database is a database used for statistical analysis purposes. It is an OLAP (online analytical processing), instead of OLTP (online transaction processing) system. Modern decision, and classical statistical databases are often closer to the relational model than the multidimensional model commonly used in OLAP systems today.
Statistical databases typically contain parameter data and the measured data for these parameters. For example, parameter data consists of the different values for varying conditions in an experiment (e.g., temperature, time). The measured data (or variables) are the measurements taken in the experiment under these varying conditions.
Many statistical databases are sparse with many null or zero values. It is not uncommon for a statistical database to be 40% to 50% sparse. There are two options for dealing with the sparseness: (1) leave the null values in there and use compression techniques to squeeze them out or (2) remove the entries that only have null values.
Statistical databases often incorporate support for advanced statistical analysis techniques, such as correlations, which go beyond SQL. They also pose unique security concerns, which were the focus of much research, particularly in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s.
Security in statistical databases.
In a statistical database, it is often desired to allow query access only to aggregate data, not individual records. Securing such a database is a difficult problem, since intelligent users can use a combination of aggregate queries to derive information about a single individual.
Some common approaches are:
For many years, research in this area was stalled, and it was thought in 1980 that, to quote:
But in 2006, Cynthia Dwork defined the field of differential privacy, using work that started appearing in 2003. While showing that some semantic security goals, related to work of Tore Dalenius, were impossible, it identified new techniques for limiting the increased privacy risk resulting from inclusion of private data in a statistical database. This makes it possible in many cases to provide very accurate statistics from the database while still ensuring high levels of privacy.
Some further reading.
Statistical and Scientific Database Management (SSDBM) An important series of conferences in this field
Some key papers in this field:


Mulatta Records

Mulatta Records, which in 2020 has changed its name to RNA Records, is a record label established in 2000 by the Nigerian record producer and DJ Ayo Osinibi and the American composer/performer Dave Soldier
It specializes in music created by unusual means, including the Thai Elephant Orchestra, and various projects by children, including 6 to 9 year olds who improvise avant-garde jazz in The Tangerine Awkestra, a traditional flute orchestra of school children in Conakry, Guinea in west Africa, compositions by Mayan Indian children in the highlands of San Mateo Ixtatan, Guatemala, and 5 to 10 year-olds in East Harlem who compose and play rap music in Da Hiphop Raskalz.
Other recordings include work by the Russian conceptual artists Komar and Melamid, music written according to poll of American music taste, resulting in the statistically Most Wanted and Unwanted Songs, two CDs of operas by writer Kurt Vonnegut with music Dave Soldier, and Mandeng Eletrik, a collaboration between Wofa, tribal musicians from a village in Guinea that lacks electricity and running water, with American R&B musicians including Bernie Worrell and Will Calhoun, albums of toy piano music by the cartoon rabbit Twink, an improvising string orchestra by Jason Hwang and contemporary flamenco by Pedro Cortes, the Delta punk band The Kropotkins, country / jazz by the Texas songwriter Vince Bell, and contemporary classical and jazz music by Robert Dick, John Clark (musician), and David First.


Shur (mugham)

“Shur”() – is one of the great mughams (a multifrequency vocal-instrumental composition) and one of seven main modes in Azerbaijani music.
This is the second mode and consists of 1-0.5-1 tone, which is created in the result of amalgamation of three tetra-chords with reach method of the first tetra-chord. Shur mode is the most used mode in Ashik art. Shur creates joyful lyrical mood at listener. Subgenres of Shur includes: Bardasht, Maye, Salmak, Shur-Shahnaz, Busalik, Bayaty-Turk, Shikasteyi-Fars, Mubarriga, Ashiran, Semai-Shams, Hijaz, Shakh Khatai, Sarenj, Gemengiz, Nishibi-Feraz, space for Shur. Mugams relating to the Shur are: Shahnaz, Sarenj, Arazbary, Osmani, Rahab, Neva.
In comparison with Shur of the beginning of the 20th century, in the modern Shur many parts are not used. Modern Shur consists of parts (shobe) such as "Maye", "Kur-Shahnaz", "Bayati-Kurd", "Shikesteyi-fars", "Mubarriga", "Semayi-shems", "Hijnaz", "Sarenj" and "Nishibi-feraz". Some performers of Shur use little parts such as "Buselik", "Ashiran" and "Shah Khatai".
Maximally shortened kind of Shur destgah includes 8 main parts: "Berdasht", "Maye", "Shur-Shahnaz", "Bayati-Turk", "Shikesteyi-fars", Semayi-shems", "Hijaz" and "Sarenj". These parts play a function of “bearing components” of the whole construction in the modern level and make a mode “skeleton” of the composition.
There is also maqam Shur in Azerbaijani music. Mughams such as "Shahnaz", "Bayati-Kurd", "Nava", Azerbaijani national songs and dance melodies and also Shur are based in this maqam.
Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov composed “Shur” mugham on the basis of this Shur. A documentary of the same name, shot in 1967 by AzTV, is dedicated to “Shur” mugham.


Kelly Latimer

Kelly Latimer is a former combat veteran and retired United States Air Force lieutenant colonel. She was the first ever female research pilot to join the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. She works with Virgin Galactic and is due to be the pilot for their first rocket launch in 2020. Latimer flew the T-38, T-34, Lockheed Martin C-141B Starlifter, C-17, 747 Shuttle Carrier aircraft and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy 747SP.
Early life and education.
Latimer attended the United States Air Force Academy. In her freshman year she spent her summers learning how to fly gliders, after which she said "I knew I would fly for the rest of my life". After graduating the Air Force Academy, she applied to NASA Armstrong but was not selected. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in astronautical engineering from the Air Force Academy in 1987 and a master's degree in astronautics from George Washington University in 1988.
Career.
Latimer became a pilot with the United States Air Force. She was a lieutenant colonel. After September 11 2001, she knew she wanted to get involved with the fight, returning to the McChord Field, 4th Airlift Squadron for operational and deployed flying. She was part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and flew more than 90 combat sorties. She was commander of the 418th Flight Test Squadron. She was Senior United States Air Force Advisor to the Iraqi Air Force and the reconnaissance squadron. She retired from the Air Force in 2007.
Latimer was the first woman research test pilot hired by Armstrong Flight Research Center, where she ran experimental test flights for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, T-38, T-34 and C-17. She is type-rated in heavy aircraft and fighters, including the Northrop T-38/Northrop F-5. Collectively, Latimer has more than 6,500 flight hours and 1,000 test flight hours in her work with NASA, Boeing and the Air Force.
Latimer became involved with system development and aircraft design during her time at Boeing. She was Chief Pilot and Deputy Director for Airlift operations for the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. She was responsible for the global operations of the C-17, managing test pilots and training other aircrew. She is a member of the Huntington Beach surfing club Wahine Kai.
In 2015, she joined Virgin Galactic as a spaceship pilot. She was the first woman to join Virgin Galactic pilot corps. She is currently responsible for flying Virgin Galactic's White Knight Two, a dual fuselage high-wing composite aircraft that is set to carry Spaceship 2. She is also set to pilot the Boeing 747 "Cosmic Girl" for Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne. In 2017 she met Mike Pence when he visited the Mojave desert. Virgin Galactic partnered with Yohji Yamamoto to design their flight suits.


Nexeya

Nexeya is a French company specialising in the design and development of electronic equipment for the aeronautics, defence, energy, rail, and aerospace sectors. With more than 800 employees, its primary establishments are located in Toulouse, Massy (Essonne) and La Couronne (Charente). The company became in 2019 a subsidiary of the German company Hensoldt. Space and defense activities have, however, been retained in a new company, called Hemeria, which employs 200 people and has a turnover of € 36 million.
History.
Created in 1997 under the name Eurilogic, Nexeya gradually increased its revenue thanks to both internal growth and external acquisitions. Its activities focus on the aeronautics, defence, aerospace, energy, and transport sectors. The company’s development can be split into 3 phases :
In July 2017, Nexeya management became a majority shareholder of the firm, holding 75% of its capital.
Activities.
Naval defence.
Nexeya provides products and services related to combat and navigation systems. The French Navy has outfitted its surveillance frigates with Lyncea (formerly Sitac), Nexeya's embedded CMS system, which allows for the creation and monitoring of a tactical situation in order to combat piracy, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration.
Aeronautics.
Nexeya designs products for the testing of aircraft avionics and electrical systems (validation, integration, fault detection, etc.) as well as specific equipment for assembly lines. Nexeya designed a WiDD wiring tester that performs an automatic multipoint check of cable harnesses in order to detect and locate permanent or intermittent defects.
Energy.
Nexeya develops and manufactures hydrogen-based energy storage and recovery solutions in order to offset the intermittent availability of renewable energy. Most notably, Nexeya designed a hydrogen energy storage station to both supply and make self-sufficient a tertiary sector building in Grand Angoulême (Charente).
Space.
This activity was partly sold in April 2019 to the new company Hemeria.
Nexeya developed the Hemeria range of nanosatellites. Angels, the first French industrial nanosatellite from this range, developed with the Cnes, will be put into orbit in late 2019. Nexeya will also be supplying Kineis with 20 nanosatellites for the first European nanosatellite satellite constellation dedicated to the Internet of Things. Nexeya has also invested in the Rennes-based start-up Unseenlabs, along with the Direction générale de l'armement (DGA), BPI France, and Breizh Up, for an innovative maritime surveillance project employing nanosatellites.
Revenue.
During the fiscal year ending June 2018, the group, which employs 825 people, generated a turnover of €125,500,000.


Jefferson Proving Ground

The Jefferson Proving Ground (or JPG), located near Madison, Indiana, was principally a munitions testing facility of Test and Evaluation Command of the United States Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command. JPG also serves other Department of Defense organizations as well as private contractors assigned.
History.
On October 8, 1940, the Chief of Ordnance acknowledged a need for the construction of an additional proving ground to carry out simultaneously and without interruption the many activities relative to proof work of the ordnance manufacturing program. In December 1940, the site acquisition committee decided on a tract of land in Ripley, Jefferson, and Jennings counties in southern Indiana. The site was selected for its proximity to a powder manufacturing plant at Charlestown, Indiana, an ordinance plant at LaPorte County, Indiana, and an ammunition storage depot in Martin County, Indiana, as well as military installations at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Fort Hayes in Ohio, and Forts Thomas and Knox in Kentucky. Residents living within the area of planned site were given 30 to 120 days to vacate the land. Construction began immediately, and the first round was fired at U.S. Army JPG on May 10, 1941. In April 1953, JPG reached a pinnacle of employment and activity, with 1,774 employees and a production of 175,000 rounds fired monthly.
Collin's Ford Bridge, Marble Creek Bridge, Oakdale School, also known as Building 401, and Old Timbers are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Base closure and further use.
In 1989, JPG was identified for base closure under the base realignment and closure (BRAC) and closed on September 30, 1995. Since that time, the U.S. Army has maintained a small on-site oversight staff and an off-site environmental coordinator. JPG is currently administered by the BRAC Division within the U.S. Army's Installation Management Agency which is responsible for managing JPG’s closure, cleanup, and property transfer.
Approximately of the grounds north of the historic firing line was leased to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 2000 to be operated as Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge. In 1998, a parcel of land north of the firing line within the former range is operated as an air-to-surface gunnery/bombing range by the Indiana Air National Guard. As of 2014, Jefferson Range is used for UAV training, including tests of air-to-ground strikes.
Railroad tracks on the site are used for car storage by the Madison Railroad
Environmental concerns.
The base contains a substantial amount of depleted uranium and the NRC has posed questions to the Army regarding environmental concerns as a result.


POST (HTTP)

In computing, POST is a request method supported by HTTP used by the World Wide Web.
By design, the POST request method requests that a web server accepts the data enclosed in the body of the request message, most likely for storing it. It is often used when uploading a file or when submitting a completed web form.
In contrast, the HTTP GET request method retrieves information from the server. As part of a GET request, some data can be passed within the URL's query string, specifying (for example) search terms, date ranges, or other information that defines the query.
As part of a POST request, an arbitrary amount of data of any type can be sent to the server in the body of the request message. A header field in the POST request usually indicates the message body's Internet media type.
Posting data.
The world wide Web and HTTP are based on a number of request methods or 'verbs', including POST and GET as well as PUT, DELETE, and several others. Web browsers normally use only GET and POST, but RESTful online apps make use of many of the others. POST's place in the range of HTTP methods is to send a representation of a new data entity to the server so that it will be stored as a new subordinate of the resource identified by the URI. For example, for the URI codice_1, POST requests might be expected to represent new customers, each including their name, address, contact details and so on. Early website designers strayed away from this original concept in two important ways. First, there is no technical reason for a URI to textually describe the web resource subordinate to which POST data will be stored. In fact, unless some effort is made, the last part of a URI will more likely describe the web application's processing page and its technology, such as codice_2. Secondly, given most web browsers' natural limitation to use only GET or POST, designers felt the need to re-purpose POST to do many other data submission and data management tasks, including the alteration of existing records and their deletion.
Efforts by some influential writers to remedy the first point began as early as 1998. Web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and others make it easier for designers to provide their users with semantic URLs. With regard to the second point, it is possible to use client-side scripting, or to write standalone apps, to make use of the other HTTP methods where they are relevant, but outside of this most web forms that submit or alter server data continue to use POST for the purpose.
That is not to say that every web form should specify codice_3 in its opening tag. Many forms are used to specify more precisely the retrieval of information from the server, without any intention of altering the main database. Search forms, for example, are ideally suited to having codice_4 specified.
There are times when HTTP GET is less suitable even for data retrieval. An example of this is when a great deal of data would need to be specified in the URL. Browsers and web servers can have limits on the length of the URL that they will handle without truncation or error. Percent-encoding of reserved characters in URLs and query strings can significantly increase their length, and while Apache HTTP Server can handle up to 4,000 characters in a URL, Microsoft Internet Explorer is limited to 2,048 characters in any URL. Equally, HTTP GET should not be used where sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords, have to be submitted along with other data for the request to complete. Even if HTTPS is used, preventing the data from being intercepted in transit, the browser history and the web server's logs will likely contain the full URL in plaintext, which may be exposed if either system is hacked. In these cases, HTTP POST should be used.
Use for submitting web forms.
When a web browser sends a POST request from a web form element, the default Internet media type is "application/x-www-form-urlencoded". This is a format for encoding key-value pairs with possibly duplicate keys. Each key-value pair is separated by an '&' character, and each key is separated from its value by an '=' character. Keys and values are both escaped by replacing spaces with the '+' character and then using percent-encoding on all other non-alphanumeric characters.
For example, the key-value pairs
are encoded as
Starting with HTML 4.0, forms can also submit data in multipart/form-data as defined in RFC 2388 (See also RFC 1867 for an earlier experimental version defined as an extension to HTML 2.0 and mentioned in HTML 3.2).
The special case of a POST to the same page that the form belongs to is known as a postback.
Affecting server state.
Per RFC 7231, the POST method is not idempotent, meaning that multiple identical requests might not have the same effect than transmitting the request only once. POST is therefore suitable for requests which change the state each time they are performed, for example submitting a comment to a blog post or voting in an online poll. GET is defined to be nullipotent, with no side-effects, and idempotent operations have "no side effects on second or future requests". For this reason, web crawlers such as search engine indexers normally use the GET and HEAD methods exclusively, to prevent their automated requests from performing such actions.
However, there are reasons why POST is used even for idempotent requests, notably if the request is very long. Due to restrictions on URLs, the query string the GET method generates may become very long, especially due to percent-encoding.


Will Rogers phenomenon

The Will Rogers phenomenon is obtained when moving an element from one set to another set raises the average values of both sets. It is based on the following statement, sometimes attributed (without any evidence) to comedian Will Rogers:
When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states.
The effect will occur when both of these conditions are met:
Numerical examples.
Consider the sets R and S
The arithmetic mean of R is 2.5, and the arithmetic mean of S is 7.
However, if 5 is moved from S to R, producing
then the arithmetic mean of R increases to 3, and the arithmetic mean of S increases to 7.5.
Consider this more illustrative example
with arithmetic means 1.5 for R and 10,033 for S.
Moving 99 from S to R gives means 34 and 15,000. 99 is orders of magnitude above 1 and 2, and orders of magnitude below 10,000 and 20,000. It should come as no surprise that the transfer of 99 increases the mean of both R and S.
The element which is moved does not have to be the very lowest of its set; it merely has to have a value that lies between the means of the two sets. Consider this example:
Moving "10", which is larger than R's mean of 7 and smaller than S's mean of 12, from S to R will raise the mean of R from 7 to 7.375, and the mean of S from 12 to 12.333. The effect still occurs, but less dramatically.
Stage migration.
One real-world example of the Will Rogers phenomenon is seen in the medical concept of stage migration. In medical stage migration, improved detection of illness leads to the movement of people from the set of healthy people to the set of unhealthy people.
Because these people are not healthy, removing them from the set of healthy people increases the average lifespan of the healthy group. Likewise, the migrated people are healthier than the people already in the unhealthy set, so adding them raises the average lifespan of that group as well. Both lifespans are statistically lengthened, even if early detection of a cancer does not lead to better treatment: because it is detected earlier, more time is lived in the "unhealthy" set of people. In this form, the paradox can be viewed an instance of the equivocation fallacy . Equivocation occurs when one term is used with multiple meanings in order to mislead the listener into unwarranted comparisons, and life span statistics before and after a stage migration use different meanings of "unhealthy", as the cutoff for detection is different.


Fhourstones

In computer science, Fhourstones is an integer benchmark that efficiently solves positions in the game of Connect-4. It was written by John Tromp in 1996-2008, and is incorporated into the Phoronix Test Suite. The measurements are reported as the number of game positions searched per second.
Available in both ANSI-C and Java, it is quite portable and compact (under 500 lines of source), and uses 50Mb of memory.
The benchmark involves (after warming up on three easier positions) solving the entire game, which takes about ten minutes on contemporary PCs, scoring between 1000 and 12,000 kpos/sec. It has been described as more realistic than some other benchmarks.
Fhourstones was named as a pun on Dhrystone (itself a pun on Whetstone), as "dhry" sounds the same as "drei", German for "three": fhourstones is an increment on dhrystones.


Frasilah

A frasilah is a historical weight unit that was used in the 19th century on the island of Zanzibar and in eastern Africa. A frasilah is equivalent to about . This weight unit was used mainly by the Arabs involved in the ivory trade to weigh the mass of elephant tusks and other goods used in the trade, such as beads, cloth and brass wire. In 1871, a frasilah of ivory could be purchased inland for 20 US$ (around 500 US$ in 2011) in goods and sold in Zanzibar for about 60 US$ (around 1 500 US$ in 2011).


Fan chart (statistics)

A fan chart is made of a group of dispersion fan diagrams,
which may be positioned according to two categorising dimensions.
A "dispersion fan diagram" is a circular diagram which
reports the same information about a dispersion as a box plot:
namely median, quartiles, and two extreme values.
Elements.
The elements of a dispersion fan diagram
are:
The scale on the circular line begins at the left
with the starting value (e. g. with zero).
The following values are applicated clockwise.
The white tail of diameter indicates the median.
The dark fan indicates the dispersion of the middle half of the observed
values; thus it encompasses the values from the first to the third quartile.
The white feathers indicate the dispersion of the middle 90% of the
observed values.
The length of the white part of the diameter corresponds with the number
of observations.
Application.
A fan chart gives a quick summary of observed values which depend from two variables. This is possible thanks of a dense representation
and a constant size which does not depend on the size of the single dispersion fan diagrams.
An essential advantage compared to a sequence of box plots
is the possibility to compare dispersion fan diagrams not only within one direction
but within two directions (horizontally and vertically).
Example.
The following example presents data from the data set "MathAchieve"
which is part of the R package
"nlme"
of José Pinheiro et al.
It contains mathematics achievement scores of 7185 students.
The students are categorised
according to sex and membership of a minority ethnic group.
The graphics show the mathematics achievement scores in dependency
on the socio-economic status of the students (x axis)
and on the average socio-economic status of all students
at the same school (y axis).
The four graphic panels differentiate the students
according to sex and membership of a minority ethnic group.
The fan charts reveals clearly how the median value
is partially following a big main tendency
while the values of the single subgroups (with the cells) scatter largely
what could lead to doubts about a possible correlation.


4900 Maymelou


Straton tube

The Straton tube, by Siemens Healthineers (formerly Siemens Medical Solutions), Erlangen, Germany) is the first X-ray tube from the class of rotating envelope tubes (RET) to be used for computed tomography.
With rotating envelope tubes, the entire vacuum tube rotates with respect to the anode axis, versus rotating anode tubes, in which the target disk rotates inside a stationary vacuum tube. The target cools by conduction rather than radiation. Heat storage is less important, and waiting times are eliminated.


Sheila Bird

Sheila Macdonald Bird (née Gore, born 18 May 1952) OBE FRSE FMedSci is a Scottish biostatistician whose assessment of misuse of statistics in the "British Medical Journal" ("BMJ") and "BMJ" series ‘Statistics in Question’ led to statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Bird's doctoral work on non-proportional hazards in breast cancer found application in organ transplantation where beneficial matching was the basis for UK's allocation of cadaveric kidneys for a decade. Bird led the Medical Research Council (MRC) Biostatistical Initiative in support of AIDS/HIV studies in Scotland, as part of which Dr A. Graham Bird and she pioneered Willing Anonymous HIV Surveillance (WASH) studies in prisons. Her work with Cooper on UK dietary bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) exposure revealed that the 1940–69 birth cohort was the most exposed and implied age-dependency in susceptibility to clinical vCJD progression from dietary BSE exposure since most vCJD cases were younger, born in 1970–89. Bird also designed the European Union's robust surveillance for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in sheep which revolutionised the understanding of scrapie.
Record linkage studies in Scotland were central to Bird's work (with others) on the late sequelae of Hepatitis C virus infection and on the morbidity and mortality of opioid addiction. Her team first quantified the very high risk of drugs-related death in the fortnight after prison-release, in response to which Bird and Hutchinson proposed a prison-based randomized controlled trial of naloxone, the opioid antagonist, for prisoners-on-release who had a history of heroin injection. Bird introduced the Royal Statistical Society’s statistical seminars for journalists and awards for statistical excellence in journalism. She is the first female statistician to have been awarded four medals by the Royal Statistical Society (Guy bronze, 1989; Austin Bradford Hill, 2000; Chambers, 2010, Howard, 2015).
Early life and education.
Bird was born in Inverness, Scotland on 18 May 1952 to Isabella Agnes Gordon ("née" Macdonald) and Herbert Gore. She was educated at Elgin Academy in Scotland, where the mathematics master, Lewis Grant, introduced her to statistics. She graduated with a joint-honours in mathematics and statistics from the University of Aberdeen. From 1974-1976 she was a research assistant in medical statistics at the University of Edinburgh where she, Jones and Rytter quantified the misuse of statistics in the BMJ. In his editorial, Stephen Lock "took on the chin" their 1977 paper and championed statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Doctoral work followed, begun at the University of Edinburgh and supervised by Stuart Pocock, on the analysis of survival in breast cancer which Bird undertook part-time during a lectureship in statistics at the University of Aberdeen (1976–80) before joining the Medical Research Council's Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge in 1980.
Career.
Bird works for the Medical Research Council (MRC), as Programme Leader at their Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge.
Publication of Bird's 23 articles on ‘Statistics in Question’ in the BMJ led to her running World Health Organization (WHO) workshops on research methods in diarrhoeal diseases for Third World paediatricians, through which she and Dilip Mahalanabis designed and piloted a clinical record-form which was subsequently adopted for all WHO-funded randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of oral rehydration solutions (ORS). The common record facilitated a subsequent exploratory analysis of individual patient data by Bird and Fontaine. This suggested benefit from lower osmolarity solutions, which was then formally tested in a series of RCTs with global change to low osmolarity ORS adopted in 2001.
Back in Cambridge, Bird worked with paediatrician Dr Colin Morley on the British Randomised Evaluation of ALEC Therapy (BREATHE), the first RCT to demonstrate a one-third reduced mortality in premature babies by administration at birth of artificial surfactant. ALEC (artificial lung expanding compound) was named for Alec Bangham FRS, who developed it. Non-Cambridge neonatologists’ prior belief was elicited by ‘trial roulette’ and had centred on a one quarter-reduction, the effect-size that BREATHE was powered to detect.
Work on transplantation statistics in the 1980s with Gilks and Bradley led to beneficial matching being adopted as the basis of UK's exchange of cadaveric donor kidneys. To estimate the potential for cadaveric solid organ donation from brainstem-dead donors, Bird designed UK's first confidential audit of all deaths in intensive care units which revealed that relatives’ refusal –rate (then 30%, since risen to 40%), not doctors’ failure to ask, was the fundamental problem.
Bird led the MRC Biostatistical Initiative in support of AIDS/HIV studies in Scotland (1990–1995), which included projection of Scotland's cases of severe immunodeficiency (so-called CD200 cases) and HIV epidemiological studies in prisons, both with co-investigator, clinical immunologist Dr A. Graham Bird.
Bird's work at the interface of public health and other jurisdictions continued. A series of record-linkage studies in Scotland on the late sequelae of Hepatitis C virus infection (with Hutchinson and Goldberg) and on the high risk of drugs-related death soon after prison-release (or after hospital-discharge for drug-treatment clients) followed. With Cooper, she estimated UK's dietary exposure to BSE by birth-cohort and they deduced lower susceptibility to vCJD-progression from dietary BSE exposure at older ages. Bird also designed the European Union's robust surveillance at abattoirs for late-stage transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in sheep.
Bird served on four working parties of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS): Counting with Confidence, Statistics and Statisticians in Drug Regulation, Performance Monitoring in the Public Services (as chair) and Statistical Issues in First-in-Man Studies. As RSS's vice-president for external affairs (2005–09), Bird introduced statistical seminars for journalists and the RSS's awards for statistical excellence in journalism; and supported Straight Statistics by contributing over 100 articles, many on H1N1 pandemic influenza, others based on her 20-weekly reporting with Colonel Clive Fairweather on military fatality-rates in Afghanistan by nationality and cause. Bird led the RSS's campaign for legislation to end the late registration of inquest deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Honours and awards.
As Sheila M. Gore, she won the Guy Medal in Bronze in 1989.
Bird was appointed OBE in 2011 for services to social statistics. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012. In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Personal life.
In September 1999 she and Bird married. Six weeks after their marriage he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme and died in January 2000. Up until his death she published under her maiden name, Gore, however since she has published under her married name of Bird, in her husband's honour.


St Albans Riverside

St Albans Riverside is a park in Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is linear with long sides between the Thames and Hampton Court Road. It runs from southeast of Garrick's Villa and his Temple to Shakespeare, Garrick's Lawn, Thames Street to a point 90 metres southeast of the interrupting small bridge that serves Tagg's Island.
About.
The area has much greenery and various seating areas. It is named after Aubrey Beauclerk, 5th Duke of St Albans (1740–1802) who moved to Hampton In 1796, living in St Albans Lodge (previously St Albans Bank) before taking up Hanworth Park House.
Local area and landmarks.
A marina followed by sailing club is to the west and Hampton Court Green to the east. Hampton Court Palace is beyond the Green. In the park, is a sundial designed by David Harber in the shape of a steel globe. Below it is a plaque which reads:
The sundial was commissioned by the widow of Gerald George 'Gerry' Braban (1931–1993), who lobbied for and co-funded the bridge to Tagg's Island that was built in the 1990s.
Transport.
The park is served by a cycleway linked with Bushy Park and buses:
Footpaths reach across Bushy Park using the facing Hampton Gate to/from: Hampton Hill Gate, Hampton Wick Gate and Teddington (& Sandy Lane) Gates serving those three districts.


Incomposite interval

An incomposite interval (; ) is a concept in the Ancient Greek theory of music concerning melodic musical intervals () between neighbouring notes in a tetrachord or scale which, for that reason, do not encompass smaller intervals. ( means "uncompounded".) Aristoxenus (fl. 335 BCE) defines melodically incomposite intervals in the following context:
In another place, Aristoxenus clarifies that
It is thus not an issue of the voice being physically incapable of singing a note within an incomposite interval. For example, in the enharmonic genus the distance from the neighbouring scale degrees "lichanos" () to "mesē" () is a ditone—a gap equivalent to the major-third interval between F and A in the modern scale. In such a case the function of the note λιχανός is such that "the 'nature of μελῳδία' somehow requires that it should leap forward at least as far as μέση, without touching down anywhere in between. Any smaller distance is melodically impossible or unintelligible, ἐκμελής".
The nature of the chromatic genus, too, is an attribute of the "kinēsis phonēs" (, "potentiality of the sounds"), so that certain melody types are "brought into being". In other words, "being composite" and "being incomposite" are attributes of the dynamic character of melodic motion. "None of these consists in the voice's coming to rest at points separated by distances of specific and determinate sizes".
An incomposite interval is "bounded by successive notes" in a scale: "If the bounding notes are successive, no note has been left out; if none has been left out, none will intervene; if none intervenes, none will divide the interval; and what does not admit of division will not be composite". Gaudentius (before the 6th century CE) explains incomposite intervals as scale-building elements:
Aristides Quintilianus (writing probably in the 3rd century AD) enumerates the incomposite intervals: "the smallest, so far as their use in melody is concerned, is the enharmonic diesis, followed—to speak rather roughly—by the semitone, which is twice the diesis, the tone, which is twice the semitone, and finally the ditone, which is twice the tone".
These various sizes of incomposite interval depend on the genus of the tetrachord, as explained by Nicomachus in the first century AD:
Thus whether an interval is composite or incomposite is a matter of context (that is, the genus in effect at that point in the melody). A semitone is an incomposite interval in the diatonic or chromatic genera, but not because quarter tone intervals may be difficult to sing in tune. It is a composite interval in the enharmonic genus, where the semitone occurs only as the outer interval of the "pyknon", made of two quarter tones.
Following the strict definition found in Nicola Vicentino's "L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica" (1555), all intervals larger than the major third (or ditone) are necessarily composite. However, for the purpose of his discussion of the "modern practice" of the 16th century, he extended the definition to include larger intervals within the octave. Accordingly, a perfect fourth is "composite" if it is filled in stepwise in a composition (C-D-E-F), but is "incomposite" when it occurs as a melodic leap or harmonic interval, without any intermediary tones.
One 20th-century interpretation is more restrictive than the definitions found in Ancient Greek sources, referring to "a large interval which appears as a melodic step or second in a scale, but which is a skip in other parts of the scale." For example the augmented second in the harmonic minor scale, on A, occurs as a step between F and G, though the equivalent minor third occurs elsewhere, such as a skip between A & C.


Amplified cactus

An amplified cactus is a cactus plant (preferably a "Denmoza" or "Geohintonia") used as a musical instrument. It harnesses the acoustic properties of a cactus, by applying contact microphones and amplifying their projection and tone. Vivien Schweitzer of "The New York Times" reports "Jason Treuting played an amplified cactus, running his hand over the plant's unfriendly spikes to produce an alluring sound like a babbling brook."
The amplified cactus is a medium rarely written for, even in the contemporary music genre. John Cage composed "Child of Tree" (1975) and "Branches" (1976) for what he described as "amplified plant materials". Cage was a large proponent of chance music and felt that the organic nature of music without man-made instruments was very strong and influential. Another of the most famous pieces for amplified cactus is "Degrees of Separation" "Grandchild of Tree" by Paul Rudy which received mention at the Bourges International Competition for Electroacoustic Music in 2000. Rudy mentions in his own program notes: The idea for a cactus and tape work came about when I heard a performance of John Cage's "Child of Tree". I was immediately taken with the sound of the cactus in particular. Taken from its natural environment and placed in the confined and groomed existence of a pot, amplified with a contact microphone, the cactus took on a completely new and interesting character...
A piece by Mark Andre, "...zu Staub..." also features three amplified cacti alongside classical instruments.


List of solar telescopes

This is a list of solar telescopes built in various countries around the world. A solar telescope is a specialized telescope that is used to observe the Sun.
This list contains ground-based professional observatory telescopes at optical wavelengths in chronological order. Solar telescopes often have multiple focal lengths, and use a various combination of mirrors such as coelostats, lenses, and tubes for instruments including spectrographs, cameras, or coronagraphs. There are many types of instruments that have been designed to observe Earth's Sun, for example, in the 20th century solar towers were common.
Former solar telescopes after 1900.
Telescopes for the Sun have existed for hundreds of years, this list is not complete and only goes back to 1900.
Other types of solar telescopes.
There are much smaller commercial and/or amateur telescopes such as "Coronado Filters" from founder and designer David Lunt, bought by Meade Instruments in 2004 and sells SolarMax solar telescopes up to 8 cm
Most solar observatories observe optically at visible, UV, and near infrared wavelengths, but other things can be observed.


Statistical significance

In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis. More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by formula_1, is the probability of the study rejecting the null hypothesis, given that the null hypothesis was assumed to be true; and the "p"-value of a result, "formula_2", is the probability of obtaining a result at least as extreme, given that the null hypothesis is true. The result is statistically significant, by the standards of the study, when formula_3. The significance level for a study is chosen before data collection, and is typically set to 5% or much lower—depending on the field of study.
In any experiment or observation that involves drawing a sample from a population, there is always the possibility that an observed effect would have occurred due to sampling error alone. But if the "p"-value of an observed effect is less than (or equal to) the significance level, an investigator may conclude that the effect reflects the characteristics of the whole population, thereby rejecting the null hypothesis.
This technique for testing the statistical significance of results was developed in the early 20th century. The term "significance" does not imply importance here, and the term "statistical significance" is not the same as research, theoretical, or practical significance. For example, the term clinical significance refers to the practical importance of a treatment effect.
History.
Statistical significance dates to the 1700s, in the work of John Arbuthnot and Pierre-Simon Laplace, who computed the "p"-value for the human sex ratio at birth, assuming a null hypothesis of equal probability of male and female births; see for details.
In 1925, Ronald Fisher advanced the idea of statistical hypothesis testing, which he called "tests of significance", in his publication "Statistical Methods for Research Workers". Fisher suggested a probability of one in twenty (0.05) as a convenient cutoff level to reject the null hypothesis. In a 1933 paper, Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson called this cutoff the "significance level", which they named formula_1. They recommended that formula_1 be set ahead of time, prior to any data collection.
Despite his initial suggestion of 0.05 as a significance level, Fisher did not intend this cutoff value to be fixed. In his 1956 publication "Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference," he recommended that significance levels be set according to specific circumstances.
Related concepts.
The significance level formula_1 is the threshold for formula_2 below which the null hypothesis is rejected even though by assumption it were true, and something else is going on. This means that formula_1 is also the probability of mistakenly rejecting the null hypothesis, if the null hypothesis is true. This is also called false positive and type I error.
Sometimes researchers talk about the confidence level instead. This is the probability of not rejecting the null hypothesis given that it is true. Confidence levels and confidence intervals were introduced by Neyman in 1937.
Role in statistical hypothesis testing.
Statistical significance plays a pivotal role in statistical hypothesis testing. It is used to determine whether the null hypothesis should be rejected or retained. The null hypothesis is the default assumption that nothing happened or changed. For the null hypothesis to be rejected, an observed result has to be statistically significant, i.e. the observed "p"-value is less than the pre-specified significance level formula_1.
To determine whether a result is statistically significant, a researcher calculates a "p"-value, which is the probability of observing an effect of the same magnitude or more extreme given that the null hypothesis is true. The null hypothesis is rejected if the "p"-value is less than (or equal to) a predetermined level, formula_1. formula_1 is also called the "significance level", and is the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis given that it is true (a type I error). It is usually set at or below 5%.
For example, when formula_1 is set to 5%, the conditional probability of a type I error, "given that the null hypothesis is true", is 5%, and a statistically significant result is one where the observed "p"-value is less than (or equal to) 5%. When drawing data from a sample, this means that the rejection region comprises 5% of the sampling distribution. These 5% can be allocated to one side of the sampling distribution, as in a one-tailed test, or partitioned to both sides of the distribution, as in a two-tailed test, with each tail (or rejection region) containing 2.5% of the distribution.
The use of a one-tailed test is dependent on whether the research question or alternative hypothesis specifies a direction such as whether a group of objects is "heavier" or the performance of students on an assessment is "better". A two-tailed test may still be used but it will be less powerful than a one-tailed test, because the rejection region for a one-tailed test is concentrated on one end of the null distribution and is twice the size (5% vs. 2.5%) of each rejection region for a two-tailed test. As a result, the null hypothesis can be rejected with a less extreme result if a one-tailed test was used. The one-tailed test is only more powerful than a two-tailed test if the specified direction of the alternative hypothesis is correct. If it is wrong, however, then the one-tailed test has no power.
Significance thresholds in specific fields.
In specific fields such as particle physics and manufacturing, statistical significance is often expressed in multiples of the standard deviation or sigma ("σ") of a normal distribution, with significance thresholds set at a much stricter level (e.g. 5"σ"). For instance, the certainty of the Higgs boson particle's existence was based on the 5"σ" criterion, which corresponds to a "p"-value of about 1 in 3.5 million.
In other fields of scientific research such as genome-wide association studies, significance levels as low as are not uncommon—as the number of tests performed is extremely large.
Limitations.
Researchers focusing solely on whether their results are statistically significant might report findings that are not substantive and not replicable. There is also a difference between statistical significance and practical significance. A study that is found to be statistically significant may not necessarily be practically significant.
Effect size.
Effect size is a measure of a study's practical significance. A statistically significant result may have a weak effect. To gauge the research significance of their result, researchers are encouraged to always report an effect size along with "p"-values. An effect size measure quantifies the strength of an effect, such as the distance between two means in units of standard deviation (cf. Cohen's d), the correlation coefficient between two variables or its square, and other measures.
Reproducibility.
A statistically significant result may not be easy to reproduce. In particular, some statistically significant results will in fact be false positives. Each failed attempt to reproduce a result increases the likelihood that the result was a false positive.
Challenges.
Overuse in some journals.
Starting in the 2010s, some journals began questioning whether significance testing, and particularly using a threshold of =5%, was being relied on too heavily as the primary measure of validity of a hypothesis. Some journals encouraged authors to do more detailed analysis than just a statistical significance test. In social psychology, the journal "Basic and Applied Social Psychology" banned the use of significance testing altogether from papers it published, requiring authors to use other measures to evaluate hypotheses and impact.
Other editors, commenting on this ban have noted: "Banning the reporting of "p"-values, as Basic and Applied Social Psychology recently did, is not going to solve the problem because it is merely treating a symptom of the problem. There is nothing wrong with hypothesis testing and "p"-values per se as long as authors, reviewers, and action editors use them correctly." Some statisticians prefer to use alternative measures of evidence, such as likelihood ratios or Bayes factors. Using Bayesian statistics can avoid confidence levels, but also requires making additional assumptions, and may not necessarily improve practice regarding statistical testing.
The widespread abuse of statistical significance represents an important topic of research in metascience.
Redefining significance.
In 2016, the American Statistical Association (ASA) published a statement on "p"-values, saying that "the widespread use of 'statistical significance' (generally interpreted as "'p" ≤ 0.05') as a license for making a claim of a scientific finding (or implied truth) leads to considerable distortion of the scientific process". In 2017, a group of 72 authors proposed to enhance reproducibility by changing the "p"-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005. Other researchers responded that imposing a more stringent significance threshold would aggravate problems such as data dredging; alternative propositions are thus to select and justify flexible "p"-value thresholds before collecting data, or to interpret "p"-values as continuous indices, thereby discarding thresholds and statistical significance. Additionally, the change to 0.005 would increase the likelihood of false negatives, whereby the effect being studied is real, but the test fails to show it.
In 2019, over 800 statisticians and scientists signed a message calling for the abandonment of the term "statistical significance" in science, and the American Statistical Association published a further official statement declaring (page 2):


4055 Magellan

4055 Magellan, provisional designation , is a bright and eccentric asteroid and near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 2.5 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 24 February 1985, by American astronomer Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in California, United States. It was later named for Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
Orbit and classification.
"Magellan" orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.2–2.4 AU once every 2 years and 6 months (897 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.33 and an inclination of 23° with respect to the ecliptic.
The first observation was made at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory, extending the asteroid's observation arc by just one month prior to its official discovery observation at Palomar.
It has a minimum orbital intersection distance with Earth of , which corresponds to 93.4 lunar distances.
Physical characteristics.
Being a V-type asteroid in the Tholen and SMASS taxonomy, "Magellan" is thought to have originated from the "Rheasilvia crater", a large impact crater on the south-polar surface of 4 Vesta, which is the main-belt's second-most-massive asteroid after 1 Ceres.
Diameter and albedo.
According to observations by the Keck Observatory and to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, "Magellan" measures between 2.2 and 2.8 kilometers in diameter and its surface has a high albedo of 0.31 to 0.33. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" (LCDB) agrees with the Keck observations, adopting an albedo of 0.31 and a diameter of 2.49 kilometers.
Lightcurves.
Between 2000 and 2015, six rotational lightcurves of "Magellan" were obtained from photometric observations by astronomers Petr Pravec and Brian D. Warner, as well as by the "Mexican Asteroid Photometry Campaign" and the Palomar Transient Factory. The highest rated lightcurve by LCDB's standards was obtained by French amateur astronomer David Romeuf in July 2015, which gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of 0.45 magnitude (). The large variation suggests an elongated shape.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães; c. 1480–1521), who led and died on the first circumnavigation of the Earth during 1519–1522. The minor planet is also named after the modern "Magellan" spacecraft, which was launched by NASA in 1989 and went on to map the surface of Venus. The Portuguese navigator is also honored by the craters Magelhaens on Mars and "Magelhaens" on the Moon. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 2 December 1990 ().


Puncoviscana Basin


FINA Synchronised Swimming World Cup

The FINA Synchronised Swimming World Cup is an international, synchronized swimming event organized by FINA and currently held every 4 years. It is a top-level international 'synchro' competition. It was first held in 1979, and 2010 saw its twelfth edition.
The event features competition in four different synchro events (Solo, Duet, Team and Free Combination), and allows each entered nation to have 1 entrant per event. The winner of the event is determined by adding a nations points from the four events. (Note: Free Combination was added to the event beginning in 2006.)
As of 2012, Canada, Japan and the USA are the only nations to have swum at all editions of the Cup.


Locrian mode

The Locrian mode is either a musical mode or simply a diatonic scale. On the piano, it is the scale that starts with B and only uses the white keys from there. Its ascending form consists of the key note, a half step, two whole steps, a further half step, and three more whole steps.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
 \clef treble \time 7/4
 c4^\markup { C Locrian mode } des es f ges aes bes c2
</score>
History.
"Locrian" is the word used to describe the inhabitants of the ancient Greek regions of Locris. Although the term occurs in several classical authors on music theory, including Cleonides (as an octave species) and Athenaeus (as an obsolete "harmonia"), there is no warrant for the modern usage of Locrian as equivalent to Glarean's Hyperaeolian mode, in either classical, Renaissance, or later phases of modal theory through the 18th century, or modern scholarship on ancient Greek musical theory and practice.
The name first came to be applied to modal chant theory after the 18th century, when it was used to describe the mode newly-numbered as mode 11, with final on B, ambitus from that note to the octave above, and with semitones therefore between the first and second, and fourth and fifth degrees. Its reciting tone (or tenor) is G, its mediant D, and it has two participants: E and F. The final, as its name implies, is the tone on which the chant eventually settles, and corresponds to the tonic in tonal music. The reciting tone is the tone around which the melody principally centres, the mediant is named from its position between the final and reciting tone, and the participant is an auxiliary note, generally adjacent to the mediant in authentic modes and, in the plagal forms, coincident with the reciting tone of the corresponding authentic mode.
Modern Locrian.
In modern practice, the Locrian may be considered to be a minor scale with the second and fifth scale degrees lowered a semitone. The Locrian mode may also be considered to be a scale beginning on the seventh scale degree of any Ionian, or major scale. The Locrian mode has the formula:
Its tonic chord is a diminished triad (Bdim in the Locrian mode of the diatonic scale corresponding to C major). This mode's diminished fifth and the Lydian mode's augmented fourth are the only modes to have a tritone above the tonic.
Overview.
The Locrian mode is the only modern diatonic mode in which the tonic triad is a diminished chord, which is considered dissonant. This is because the interval between the root and fifth of the chord is a diminished fifth. For example, the tonic triad of B Locrian is made from the notes B, D, F. The root is B and the fifth is F. The diminished-fifth interval between them is the cause for the chord's dissonance.
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
 \clef treble \time 7/4
 b4^\markup { B Locrian mode } c d e f g a b2
</score>
The name "Locrian" is borrowed from music theory of ancient Greece. However, what is now called the Locrian mode was what the Greeks called the Diatonic Mixolydian tonos. The Greeks used the term "Locrian" as an alternative name for their "Hypodorian", or "Common" tonos, with a scale running from "mese" to "nete hyperbolaion", which in its diatonic genus corresponds to the modern Aeolian mode. In his reform of modal theory in the "Dodecachordon" (1547), Heinrich Glarean named this division of the octave "Hyperaeolian" and printed some musical examples (a three-part polyphonic example specially commissioned from his friend Sixtus Dietrich, and the Christe from a mass by Pierre de La Rue), though he did not accept Hyperaeolian as one of his twelve modes. The usage of the term "Locrian" as equivalent to Glarean's Hyperaeolian or the ancient Greek (diatonic) Mixolydian, however, has no authority before the 19th century.
Usage.
There are brief passages in works by Sergei Rachmaninov (Prelude in B minor, op. 32, no. 10), Paul Hindemith ("Ludus Tonalis"), and Jean Sibelius (Symphony No. 4 in A minor, op. 63) that have been, or may be, regarded as in the Locrian mode. Claude Debussy's "Jeux" has three extended passages in the Locrian mode.
The theme of the second movement ("Turandot Scherzo") of Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber" (1943) alternates sections in Mixolydian and Locrian modes, ending in Locrian.
English folk musician John Kirkpatrick's song "Dust to Dust" was written in the Locrian mode, backed by his concertina. The Locrian mode is not at all traditional in English music, but was used by Kirkpatrick as a musical innovation.
Björk's "Army of Me" is a rare example of a pop song whose verse is written in the Locrian mode.


Dropped A tuning

Dropped A tuning is an alternate tuning for a 7-string guitar where the lowest string is tuned down ("dropped") from the standard B by one whole step to A as follows A1-E2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4. Also, for a 6-string guitar, dropped A tuning is achieved by tuning all strings down a 4th with the lowest string tuned 1 additional step down as follows A1-E2-A2-D3-F#3-B3. This is a "drop 1" tuning in the key of B (i.e. tune the whole guitar down a perfect fourth from standard tuning, then tune the 6th string a whole step down). As a result, it uses the same fingering as drop D tuning and drop C tuning.
An alternate dropped A tuning utilizes a guitar tuned to E Standard with the 6th string dropped to a low A, resulting in AADGBE with the 6th and 5th strings an octave apart.
Another variation of this tuning is AEADGB, which imitates a 7 on a six-string, excluding the high E.
Another dropped A tuning is AGCFAD ("drop perfect fourth in the key of the D", i.e. whole guitar is tuned down one step, then the lowest string is dropped to A).


Rutherford (unit)

The rutherford (symbol Rd) is a non-SI unit of radioactive decay. It is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one million nuclei decay per second. It is therefore equivalent to one megabecquerel, and one becquerel equals one microrutherford. One rutherford is equivalent to 2.703 × 10−5 curie.
The unit was introduced in 1946. It was named after British/New Zealand physicist and Nobel laureate Lord Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize in 1908), who was an early leader in the study of atomic nucleus disintegrations. After the becquerel was introduced in 1975 as the SI unit for activity, the rutherford became obsolete, and it is no longer commonly used.
Radiation related quantities.
The following table shows radiation quantities in SI and non-SI units:


Manuel Cardona

Manuel Cardona Castro (7 September 1934 – 2 July 2014) was a physicist. According to the ISI Citations web database, Cardona was one of the eight most cited physicists since 1970. He specialized in solid state physics.
Academic career.
Cardona was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1934. After obtaining a Masters in physics in 1955 from University of Barcelona Cardona was awarded a fellowship to work as a graduate student at Harvard University starting in 1956. At Harvard he began investigations of the dielectric properties of semiconductors, in particular germanium and silicon. With this work as a thesis he received a PhD in Applied Physics at Harvard. From 1959 till 1961 he continued similar work on III-V semiconductors at the RCA Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1961 he moved to the RCA Labs in Princeton, NJ, where he continued work on the optical properties of semiconductors and started investigations of the microwave properties of superconductors. In 1964 he became a member of the Physics Faculty of Brown University (Providence, RI). In June–September 1965 he taught at the University of Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Ford Foundation. In 1971 he moved to Stuttgart, Germany as a founding director of the then-recently created Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Concomitantly he became scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, where he became emeritus in 2000.
Interests.
Cardona's main interests were in the fields of: Raman scattering (and other optical spectroscopies) as applied to semiconductor microstructures, materials with tailor-made isotopic compositions, and high "T"c superconductors, particularly investigations of electronic and vibronic excitations in the normal and superconducting state.
Distinctions and honors.
Besides receiving over at least 61 awards during his career, Cardona held eleven honorary doctorates. Some notable honors include:
Publications.
Cardona has authored over 1,300 scientific publications in international journals, ten monographs on solid state physics and co-authored a textbook on semiconductors. Since 1972, Cardona has served on the Board of Editors of at least seven journals, including being the Editor-in-Chief of "Solid State Communications" from 1992 to 2005.
Some of his works include:
Personal life.
He died in Stuttgart in 2014, where he lived since 1971 with his wife Inge Cardona (née Hecht). He held American, German and Spanish citizenship and had 3 children and 7 grandchildren.


Shavetail

Shavetail was an experimental American rocket developed during the 1950s. Used to evaluate the rapidly developing technology of rocketry, eleven Shavetail rockets were fired during 1959.
Design and development.
Intended to assist in the development of rocket and missile technologies, Shavetail was a small, inexpensive, unguided solid-fueled rocket that was capable of being modified to be tested in various configurations. Among the systems tested was one to ensure precise payload separation at motor burnout.
Operational history.
A series of eleven launches of the Shavetail rocket were conducted in late 1959, starting in August and ending in October. The maximum range of Shavetail was .


Business Japanese Proficiency Test

The is a Japanese language proficiency test designed to objectively measure a person's practical communicative skills in communicating and responding to information on a Japanese-language business environment. Unlike its counterpart Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) which focuses more on general Japanese, BJT is not designed for measuring Japanese language knowledge nor business knowledge but instead, BJT is designed to measure a person’s practical communicative ability to utilize and respond to given information, ability to express thoughts and opinions, and at the same time promote ideas or projects to people of different backgrounds and expertise.
The BJT is not only engineered to measure a person’s verbal communicative skills, but also the ability to understand and use Japanese with the aid of text, diagrams, photographs and any other available information in emails or faxes, etc. and at the same time to appropriately perform tasks and workloads suited to a Japanese-language business environment.
The Business Japanese Proficiency Test covers the full range of events or situations that may arise on a Japanese-language business environment.
History.
The test was first offered in 1996 and was revised in 2003. It was originally administered by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). In April 2009, however, oversight was transferred to the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Public Interest Foundation: the same organization that administers the Kanji kentei.
On August 18, 2010, it was announced that the test would "be discontinued at the end of the current fiscal year". However, on November 25, 2010, it was announced that the test would be "relaunched".
Examination and scoring.
The Business Japanese Proficiency Test is split into three parts, Listening Comprehension, Listening and Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension.
The test is scored out of a possible 800. The score is then ranked on a scale of 6 levels: J5, J4, J3, J2, J1, J1+, with J1+ being the highest and J5 the lowest.
Testing locations.
Starting April 2017, the BJT is now being delivered as a computer based test via the Pearson Vue delivery system, a radical change from the industry standard paper based testing.
As of 2018, the BJT is now available in more than 16 countries via the Pearson Vue testing network.


UkabazUmorezU

, translated in English to "slow and steady wins the race," is the fifth studio album by Japanese musician Sugai Ken and his first LP for the New York-based independent label RVNG Intl. Continuing the ambient electroacoustic style of Ken's previous albums, "UkabazUmorezU" is a set of musical representations of Japanese folk traditions and "artificial" versions of passageways in the Kanagawa Prefecture during the nighttime. It was released on October 20, 2017 to favorable critical reviews.
Concept and composition.
As with previous works by Sugai Ken, "UkabazUmorezU" follows an ambient electroacoustic style "that hums with the vibrancy of people and tradition, deftly straddling the temporal gap between past and present, myth and reality," "Fact" summarized. The title of "UkabazUmorezU" translates to "slow and steady wins the race," which, according to Ken, means "the perseverance of an idea through originality in a world highly influenced by trends." A major concept of the album is Japanese artists' exposure to aspects of art of the Western world, such as a yokai-esque "atmosphere" "speaking through a Western electroacoustic motif," RVNG Intl.'s press release stated.
The sound of "UkabazUmorezU" is based on Ken's personal interest in an "obscured horizon." "UkabazUmorezU" involves Ken imagining real-life passageways in the Kanagawa Prefecture during the nighttime before coming up with audio representations of "artificial" versions of them that are "tethered to but abstracted from the natural world" and contain "recontextualized Japanese rituals and tradition." The album mainly consists of synthesizers and recordings and synthesized replications of actual places in Japan and their folk traditions. "Ganoubyoushi" involves the slapping of a Japanese hand fan with conversations in the background to represent the tradition of hand fans, while "Wochikaeri to Uzume" is about an old woman rejuvenating with the help of her respect to water.
Ray Philp of "Resident Advisor" found it different from Ken's past works for its use of "unlikely" source material, such as the James Ferraro-style "sighing vocal synths" and "funny animal samples." He analyzed some of the tracks, including "Wochikaeri To Uzume" and ""Ganoubyoshi," felt more like "hallucinations" of random sound effects and instruments rather than sound portrayals of Kanagawa. Some songs, such as "Katsura," "Doujiri" and "Wochikaeri To Uzume," have cartoonish orchestral instruments and slapstick foley that add a surreal element to the album and recall Ken's childhood. A "Tiny Mix Tapes" found the album different from other ambient records: most ambient albums "resist boundaries and contouring," but "UkabazUmorezU" is "more particular, insular, imaginary, and full of contours shaped by [...] moments and the spaces between them."
Release and reception.
Ken first contacted RVNG Intl. in the winter of 2015 about joining the label. It let him join after the 2016 release of his album "On The Quakefish", and his first release for the label, as well as the lead single of "UkabazUmorezU", was "Wochikaeri to Uzume," which came out on August 9, 2017. The video for "Doujiri," released on October 27, 2017, was directed by Kiyotaka “Kiyo” Sumiyoshi and is a visual representation of Ken’s folk-inspired musical style, taking place in a "shadowy forest inhabited by ancient spirits," "The Attic" summarized. RVNG Intl. distributed "UkabazUmorezU" on October 20, 2017 via CD and digital download and the vinyl version on November 10. The album garnered favorables from sources such as "Resident Advisor" and "Tiny Mix Tapes" upon its release.
Track listing.
Derived from the RVNG Intl. official website, with bonus track lengths derived from the official Sugai Ken Bandcamp.
Personnel.
Derived from the liner notes of "UkabazUmorezU".