2708 Burns

2708 Burns ("prov. designation": ) is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 24 November 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at the Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States. It was named after American planetary scientist Joseph A. Burns. The likely elongated B-type asteroid has a rotation period of 5.3 hours.
Orbit and classification.
"Burns" is a Themistian asteroid that belongs to the Themis family (), a very large family of carbonaceous asteroids, named after 24 Themis. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.5–3.6 AU once every 5 years and 5 months (1,975 days; semi-major axis of 3.08 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.18 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic.
The asteroid was first observed as at Winchester Observatory in January 1912. The body's observation arc begins with a precovery taken at Goethe Link Observatory in February 1950, more than 31 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Joseph A. Burns (born 1941), American planetary scientist and astronomer at Cornell University in New York, and a co-discoverer of the trans-Neptunian object at Palomar in 1997. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 4 August 1982 ().
Physical characteristics.
In the SMASS classification, "Burns" is a carbonaceous B-type, which are somewhat brighter than the common C-type asteroids.
Rotation period.
In March 2010, a rotational lightcurve of "Burns" was obtained from photometric observations by French amateur astronomer René Roy. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 5.315 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.52 magnitude, indicative for a non-spherical shape ().
Diameter and albedo.
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, "Burns" measures between 13.63 and 22 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.051 and 0.12. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes an albedo of 0.08 and calculates a diameter of 17.86 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.1.


PollyGrind Film Festival

The PollyGrind Film Festival, also known as simply Pollygrind and the PollyGrind Underground Film Festival, was an annual event held in Las Vegas, Nevada that specialized "in all things alternative, with a wide variety of films not shown elsewhere." Spotlighting short films, feature-length films, music videos and trailers of all genres, PollyGrind was founded by filmmaker and promoter Chad Clinton Freeman. The event prided itself on focusing on individuality, diversity, creativity and empowerment. Vegas Seven has said PollyGrind is a "celebration of all things, dark, bloody, underground and arthouse."
History.
The event gave a slew of awards that are quite different than most festivals. Those include The Biggest Baddest Mother of the PollyGrind, Best Use of Nudity/Sexuality, Best Use of Violence/Gore, Most Outrageous, and Most Creative. There is also a Bad Girl Award and an Ultimate Badass Award.
Started in 2010, PollyGrind's first year was a five-night event "with over a dozen features, plus tons of short films, trailers and music videos; the quality ranged from borderline incompetent to undiscovered genius, virtually all within the confines of horror and sci-fi." Arrowinthehead.com declared the event a "B-movie jamboree of awesomeness" that "only Vegas has the balls to host."
The second installment of the festival included more than 100 films over a span of 10 days. Programming ranged from campy horror B-movies to extreme, underground and avant-garde films and according to Robin Leach featured "every night creature from hookers to zombies."
DreadCentral.com noted that "PollyGrind has quickly made a name for itself as one of the up-and-coming premiere genre fests out there due to the success of each year of programming." Filmmaker Adam Rehmeier, whose film "The Bunny Game" was banned by the British Board of Film Classification right after playing the event, called the festival a display of cinema's "bastards and red-headed step children."
"MovieMaker" magazine named PollyGrind to its 2014 list of "50 festivals worth the entry fee" and its 2012 list of "25 festivals worth the entry fee." The festival was also named to MovieMaker's 2013 "Top 5 Coolest Experiemntal/Underground Film Festivals."
As of 2013, PollyGrind is a member of Film Exchange, a multi-market screening network composed of regional U.S. and International film festivals. Select winners at PollyGrind advance to screen at the RxSM Self-Medicated Film Expo (RxSM), which takes place in Austin, Texas each year alongside South by Southwest.
Starting in 2014, feature film official selections at the festival will also be looked at for distribution through its new label PollyGrind Presents, while short films will be considered for special features and compilation releases through a number of outlets.
In regards to successes of the festival, filmmaker Eric Stanze noted in his 2014 Fearnet column that Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska of "American Mary" fame and Calvin Reeder of The Rambler and "V/H/S" received "major boosts in their careers when their early works won key awards at the fest." He also noted "Randy Moore’s 2013 Sundance Official Selection "Escape from Tomorrow" was first an Official Selection of PollyGrind in 2012."
2014 marked the final year of the festival. While it may be resurrected in the future, as of summer 2015, it was no longer in operation.
World premieres.
2012.
"Sunday's Child"


Pie chart

A pie chart (or a circle chart) is a circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each slice (and consequently its central angle and area), is proportional to the quantity it represents. While it is named for its resemblance to a pie which has been sliced, there are variations on the way it can be presented. The earliest known pie chart is generally credited to William Playfair's "Statistical Breviary" of 1801.
Pie charts are very widely used in the business world and the mass media. However, they have been criticized, and many experts recommend avoiding them, as research has shown it is difficult to compare different sections of a given pie chart, or to compare data across different pie charts. Pie charts can be replaced in most cases by other plots such as the bar chart, box plot, dot plot, etc.
History.
The earliest known pie chart is generally credited to William Playfair's "Statistical Breviary" of 1801, in which two such graphs are used. Playfair presented an illustration, which contained a series of pie charts. One of those charts depicted the proportions of the Turkish Empire located in Asia, Europe and Africa before 1789. This invention was not widely used at first.
Playfair thought that pie charts were in need of a third dimension to add additional information.
Florence Nightingale may not have invented the pie chart, though in fact she popularised it greatly. She was later assumed to have created it due to the obscurity of Playfair's creation. Nightingale's polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram, to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed was published in Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army and sent to Queen Victoria in 1858.
The French engineer Charles Joseph Minard also used pie charts, in 1858. A map of his from 1858 used pie charts to represent the cattle sent from all around France for consumption in Paris.
Variants and similar charts.
3D pie chart and perspective pie cake.
A 3d pie chart, or perspective pie chart, is used to give the chart a 3D look. Often used for aesthetic reasons, the third dimension does not improve the reading of the data; on the contrary, these plots are difficult to interpret because of the distorted effect of perspective associated with the third dimension. The use of superfluous dimensions not used to display the data of interest is discouraged for charts in general, not only for pie charts.
Doughnut chart.
A doughnut chart (also spelled donut) is a variant of the pie chart, with a blank center allowing for additional information about the data as a whole to be included.
 Doughnut charts are similar to pie charts in that their aim is to illustrate proportions. This type of circular graph can support multiple statistics at once and it provides a better data intensity ratio to standard pie charts. It does not have to contain information in the center.
Exploded pie chart.
A chart with one or more sectors separated from the rest of the disk is known as an "exploded pie chart". This effect is used to either highlight a sector, or to highlight smaller segments of the chart with small proportions.
Polar area diagram.
The polar area diagram is similar to a usual pie chart, except sectors have equal angles and differ rather in how far each sector extends from the center of the circle.
The polar area diagram is used to plot cyclic phenomena (e.g., counts of deaths by month).
For example, if the counts of deaths in each month for a year are to be plotted then there will be 12 sectors (one per month) all with the same angle of 30 degrees each. The radius of each sector would be proportional to the square root of the death count for the month, so the area of a sector represents the number of deaths in a month.
If the death count in each month is subdivided by cause of death, it is possible to make multiple comparisons on one diagram, as is seen in the polar area diagram famously developed by Florence Nightingale.
The first known use of polar area diagrams was by André-Michel Guerry, which he called (circular curves), in an 1829 paper showing seasonal and daily variation in wind direction over the year and births and deaths by hour of the day. Léon Lalanne later used a polar diagram to show the frequency of wind directions around compass points in 1843. The wind rose is still used by meteorologists. Nightingale published her rose diagram in 1858. Although the name "coxcomb" has come to be associated with this type of diagram, Nightingale originally used the term to refer to the publication in which this diagram first appeared—an attention-getting book of charts and tables—rather than to this specific type of diagram.
Ring chart, sunburst chart, and multilevel pie chart.
A ring chart, also known as a sunburst chart or a multilevel pie chart, is used to visualize hierarchical data, depicted by concentric circles. The circle in the center represents the root node, with the hierarchy moving outward from the center. A segment of the inner circle bears a hierarchical relationship to those segments of the outer circle which lie within the angular sweep of the parent segment.
Spie chart.
A variant of the polar area chart is the spie chart designed by Dror Feitelson.
This superimposes a normal pie chart with a modified polar area chart to permit the comparison of two sets of related data.
The base pie chart represents the first data set in the usual way, with different slice sizes. The second set is represented by the superimposed polar area chart, using the same angles as the base, and adjusting the radii to fit the data. For example, the base pie chart could show the distribution of age and gender groups in a population, and the overlay their representation among road casualties. Age and gender groups that are especially susceptible to being involved in accidents then stand out as slices that extend beyond the original pie chart.
Square chart / Waffle chart.
Square charts, also called Waffle Charts, are a form of pie charts that use squares instead of circles to represent percentages. Similar to basic circular pie charts, square pie charts take each percentage out of a total 100%.They are usually 10x10 grids, where each cell represents 1%. Despite the name, circles, pictograms (such as of people), and other shapes may be used instead of squares. The benefit to these is that it is easier to depict smaller percentages that would be hard to see on traditional pie charts.
Example.
The following example chart is based on preliminary results of the election for the European Parliament in 2004. The table lists the number of seats allocated to each party group, along with the derived percentage of the total that they each make up. The values in the last column, the derived central angle of each sector, Is found by multiplying the percentage by 360°.
The size of each central angle is proportional to the size of the corresponding quantity, here the number of seats. Since the sum of the central angles has to be 360°, the central angle for a quantity that is a fraction "Q" of the total is 360"Q" degrees.
In the example, the central angle for the largest group (European People's Party (EPP)) is 135.7° because 0.377 times 360, rounded to one decimal place, equals 135.7.
Use and effectiveness.
A flaw exhibited by pie charts is that they cannot show more than a few values without separating the visual encoding (the “slices”) from the data they represent (typically percentages). When slices become too small, pie charts have to rely on colors, textures or arrows so the reader can understand them. This makes them unsuitable for use with larger amounts of data. Pie charts also take up a larger amount of space on the page compared to the more flexible bar charts, which do not need to have separate legends, and can display other values such as averages or targets at the same time.
Statisticians generally regard pie charts as a poor method of displaying information, and they are uncommon in scientific literature. One reason is that it is more difficult for comparisons to be made between the size of items in a chart when area is used instead of length and when different items are shown as different shapes.
Further, in research performed at AT&T Bell Laboratories, it was shown that comparison by angle was less accurate than comparison by length. Most subjects have difficulty ordering the slices in the pie chart by size; when an equivalent bar chart is used the comparison is much easier. Similarly, comparisons between data sets are easier using the bar chart. However, if the goal is to compare a given category (a slice of the pie) with the total (the whole pie) in a single chart and the multiple is close to 25 or 50 percent, then a pie chart can often be more effective than a bar graph.
In a pie chart with many sections, several values may be represented with the same or similar colors, making interpretation difficult.
Several studies presented at the "European Visualization Conference" analyzed the relative accuracy of several pie chart formats, reaching the conclusion that pie charts and doughnut charts produce similar error levels when reading them, and square pie charts provide the most accurate reading.


68 Leto

Leto (minor planet designation: 68 Leto) is a large main belt asteroid that is orbiting the Sun with a period of 4.64 years. Its spectral type is S, suggesting a stony, silicate composition. The asteroid was discovered by German astronomer Robert Luther on April 29, 1861, and is named after Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis in Greek mythology. It has an estimated cross-sectional size of 123 km and a rotation period of 14.8 hours.


Certification of Italian as a Foreign Language

The Certification of Italian as a Foreign Language (Certificazione di Italiano come Lingua Straniera or CILS) is a qualification offered by the Foreigners University of Siena for foreign speakers of the Italian language, recognizing various levels of language proficiency. The qualification is recognized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is often used to grant acceptance in any Italian university or higher education institution in Italy.
Origins.
The origins of the modern CILS qualification are said to date back to 1588 when the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand I created a school for learning of the then Tuscan Italian language for German students. Subsequent movements for the dissemination of the Italian language and Italian culture have also been established and promoted throughout history. The Foreigners University of Siena embodies the role nowadays for the official creation, distribution, and awarding of the CILS qualification.
Structure.
The qualification is officially issued on successful completion of a particular level, conforming with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages of the European Council. Therefore six levels of increasing difficulty are represented by the examinations involved to obtain the certificate. The beginner level examination starts at level A1 whilst the most advanced level is C2. As such the qualification resembles the DELF/DALF used for recognizing French language ability. This said, however, the qualification is often seen as comprising four levels (from CILS Uno to CILS Quattro, B1 to C2 according to the European Framework) as the Italian required becomes more advanced. All examinations cover what are viewed as the most important elements in language acquisition: speaking, reading, written composition, analysis of structures of communication, and listening.
Levels.
CILS Uno
The first (B1) of the more advanced levels requires the passing of a three-hour-long examination, testing an applicant's knowledge of basic Italian.
CILS Due
The second level (B2) features a four-hour-long examination with an advancement of difficulty. This level is considered as recognizing an applicant's sustained ability to adequately converse in Italian and is the level from which one may apply for entrance to an Italian university without sitting the normally obligatory language assessment.
CILS Tre
The third level (C1) is again another advancement in difficulty and represents a high competence in speaking Italian. An applicant must pass a five-hour-long examination to receive this level of qualification.
CILS Quattro
The fourth level (C2) is the highest level of the CILS qualifications. Upon successful completion of the five-and-a-half-hour-long examination of this level an applicant is regarded as having reached a point of language mastery, almost akin to that of a native.
Eligibility.
CILS qualification is open to all Italian residents abroad and non-Italian speakers wishing to validate their skills in Italian. Applicants of any age are eligible to apply. Preparation for the examination is highly encouraged.
Procedure.
To sit the examination, applicants must pay for registration (prices varying between countries) and then sit it at any certified examination centre. When an exam has been completed, the University for Foreigners of Siena evaluates the result, following the guidelines of the European Union, awarding the appropriate level of qualification when an applicant scores the required minimum pass mark or above. The examinations traditionally take place in June and December of every year.
Many centres around the world, including the University for Foreigners of Siena, organize preparatory lessons and guides to best prepare students for the rigours of the exams.


Split Film Festival

Split Film Festival or Split International Festival of New Film, is one of the oldest film and video festivals in Croatia that showcases new, creative, personal, radical works of all styles, themes, genres and lengths, whether film, or new media, preferably from outside the mainstream. Festival's previous guests included Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas, Jean Marie Straub & Daniele Huillot, late Stan Brakhage, Claire Denis, Bela Tarr, Lars von Trier and Cyrus Frisch.
The Festival presents screenings of selected films, videos, interactive media, installations, performances, retrospectives workshops, discussions and festival's catalogue.
Split Film Festival takes place every Summer in Split, Croatia. The Festival is open to all new, innovative, personal, experimental film, radical, subversive etc. work (film, video and new media) of all genres and lengths, preferably from outside the mainstream, whether it was made on a shoestring budget or is a studio release.


VHF Records

VHF Records is an American record label, known for their extensive work with several major experimental artists. The label is based in the Washington, DC suburb of Fairfax, Va., and it initially focused on indie and experimental bands from that region. The label has since branched out to release innovative and offbeat music from around the world, although Northern Virginia artists are still prominently featured in the catalog.
The label was founded by Bill Kellum in 1991, originally to release a single each by his own band, Rake, and that of his friends, Wingtip Sloat. After a handful of releases by both bands, Kellum acquired the US rights to the first releases by UK psychedelic group Flying Saucer Attack including the CD edition of their debut album. Following this, Kellum released an album by Matthew Bower's Skullflower, which in turn led to the release of an LP by Bower and Richard Youngs. Since then, Youngs has released a dozen collaborative albums on the label, including 6 with Simon Wickham-Smith (who has also essayed two solo sets for the imprint), 3 with Alex Neilson, one from his progressive rock unit Ilk (with Andrew Paine) and one with Makoto Kawabata. Kawabata has also released 3 solo albums for the label. Other artists include Vibracathedral Orchestra, Roy Montgomery, Jack Rose, Pelt, and Stephen O'Malley's Æthenor. Matthew Bower released another 2 Skullflower albums on the label, one Total release and several more under his most recent solo alias, Sunroof!.
Their most recent releases have been from former VCO member Neil Campbell's Astral Social Club, VCO themselves, Philadelphia folk unit Fern Knight's 2006 release "Music for Witches and Alchemists" and their 2008 self-titled release "Fern Knight", and a dual LP/CD set from Youngs and Neilson. A long-delayed Wingtip Sloat compilation has also finally been released in recent weeks.


Whetstone (benchmark)

The Whetstone benchmark is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers. It was first written in Algol 60 in 1972 at the Technical Support Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry (later part of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency) in the United Kingdom. It was derived from statistics on program behaviour gathered on the KDF9 computer at NPL National Physical Laboratory, using a modified version of its Whetstone ALGOL 60 compiler. The workload on the machine was represented as a set of frequencies of execution of the 124 instructions of the Whetstone Code. The Whetstone Compiler was built at the Atomic Power Division of the English Electric Company in Whetstone, Leicestershire, England, hence its name. Dr. B.A. Wichman at NPL produced a set of 42 simple ALGOL 60 statements, which in a suitable combination matched the execution statistics.
By strict definition, the term "whetstone" refers to a sharpening stone utilized to hone a sharp edge on a steel utensil such as a knife; the obvious reference here is to improve the quality or performance of code by honing its characteristics against the benchmark.
To make a more practical benchmark Harold Curnow of TSU wrote a program incorporating the 42 statements. This program worked in its ALGOL 60 version, but when translated into FORTRAN it was not executed correctly by the IBM optimizing compiler. Calculations whose results were not output were omitted. He then produced a set of program fragments which were more like real code and which collectively matched the original 124 Whetstone instructions. Timing this program gave a measure of the machine’s speed in thousands of Whetstone instructions per second (). The Fortran version became the first general purpose benchmark that set industry standards of computer system performance. Further development was carried out by Roy Longbottom, also of TSU/CCTA, who became the official design authority. The Algol 60 program ran under the Whetstone compiler in July 2010, for the first time since the last KDF9 was shut down in 1980, but now executed by a KDF9 emulator. Following increased computer speeds, performance measurement was changed to Millions of Whetstone Instructions Per Second (MWIPS).
Source code and pre-compiled versions for PCs in C/C++, Basic, Visual Basic, Fortran and Java are available.
The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the floating-point arithmetic performance. A similar benchmark for integer and string operations is the Dhrystone.


Mazda Proving Grounds

Mazda uses a number of different Proving Grounds to test their vehicles.
Miyoshi Proving Ground – Hiroshima, Japan.
Miyoshi Proving Ground is Mazda's primary testing facility, located in Miyoshi, Hiroshima, Japan and is owned by the company. The facility covers of land and opened in June, 1965. Facilities include a banked high speed test track, wind tunnel, crash test facility, and durability testing. In addition, a diesel engine assembly plant is located on the site.
Latitude and Longitude:
Mine Proving Grounds (MPG) – Nagao, Japan.
The site was acquired by Mazda Corporation from CQ Motors Corporation, Tokyo in February–March 2006, after the previous company withdrew from the racing circuit business. The current setup includes: a circuit course, control tower, gymkhana space, pit area, paddocks, and viewing stands. Mazda added high speed straights for slalom performance testing, a European style mid-range handling road and a high speed hillclimb/low friction road for brake system assessment.
Gross Area: . Total floor area: (includes all office buildings and other equipment on the land).
Location: 1173-1 Nagao, Nishiatsu-cho, Mine City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Latitude and Longitude:
Kenbuchi Proving Ground – Kamikawa, Hokkaido, Japan.
Kenbuchi Proving Ground is an automobile testing facility in Kamikawa, Hokkaido, Japan owned by Mazda Motor Corporation. The facility is primarily used for cold-weather testing including systems such as AWD, ABS, TCS, and DSC. The facility was established in January 1990. It includes of land.
Latitude and Longitude:
Nakasatsunai Proving Ground – Kasai, Hokkaido, Japan.
Nakasatsunai Proving Ground is an automobile testing facility in Kasai, Hokkaido, Japan owned by Mazda Motor Corporation. The facility, opened in January 2002, is primarily used for cold-weather testing. It includes of land.
Latitude and Longitude:
Arizona Proving Grounds - Wittmann, Arizona, USA.
Mazda uses Ford's Arizona Proving Grounds in Wittmann, Arizona, United States on a contract basis for hot weather durability testing, sun exposure testing, climate control validation, and dust intrusion testing.
Latitude and Longitude:


Hypoaeolian mode

The Hypoaeolian mode, literally meaning "below Aeolian", is the name assigned by Henricus Glareanus in his "Dodecachordon" (1547) to the musical plagal mode on A, which uses the diatonic octave species from E to the E an octave above, divided by the final into a second-species fourth (semitone–tone–tone) plus a first-species fifth (tone–semitone–tone–tone): E F G A + A B C D E. The tenor or reciting tone is C, mediant B, the participants are the low and high Es, the conceded modulations are G and D, and the absolute initials are E, G, A, B, and C.
For his plainchant examples Glarean proposed two important and well-known Gregorian melodies normally written with their finals on A: the antiphon "Benedicta tu in mulieribus" (traditionally designated as transposed Hypophrygian) and the gradual "Haec dies—Justus ut palma" (traditionally designated as transposed Hypodorian).
A polyphonic example of the Hypoaeolian mode is motet 19 from Palestrina's "Liber quartus" of five-voice motets on the Song of Solomon.


Mini-rotary viscometer

The mini-rotary viscometer is a device used to measure the pumpability of an engine oil at low temperatures. Engine oils must meet viscometric standards including those determined by the MRV in order to be classifiable within SAE J300 viscosity grades. The requirement was added after the winters of 1980-81 and 1981-82 caused major pumpability field problems in the US and Europe.
Different MRV test procedure exist; for example ASTM D4684, required for SAE J300, involves heating the oil to remove its "memory" then cooling it at a controlled rate over a period of more than 40 hours to the test temperature. ASTM D4684 is done with fresh oil, so the MRV result may not be representative of used oil pumpability. Some motor vehicles manufacturers specify used oil MRV requirements.


4977 Rauthgundis


Contour boxplot

In statistical graphics and scientific visualization, the contour boxplot is an exploratory tool that has been proposed for visualizing ensembles of feature-sets determined by a threshold on some scalar function (e.g. level-sets, isocontours). Analogous to the classical boxplot and considered an expansion of the concepts defining functional boxplot, the descriptive statistics of a contour boxplot are: the envelope of the 50% central region, the median curve and the maximum non-outlying envelope.
To construct a contour boxplot, data ordering is the first step. In functional data analysis, each observation is a real function, therefore data ordering is different from the classical boxplot where scalar data are simply ordered from the smallest sample value to the largest. More generally, data depth, gives a center-outward ordering of data points, and thereby provides a mechanism for constructing rank statistics of various kinds of multidimensional data. For instance, functional data examples can be ordered using the method of band depth or a modified band depth. In contour data analysis, each observation is a feature-set (a subset of the domain), and therefore not a function. Thus, the notion of band depth and modified band depth is further extended to accommodate features that can be expressed as sets but not necessarily as functions. Contour band depth allows for ordering feature-set data from the center outwards and, thus, introduces a measure to define functional quantiles and the centrality or outlyingness of an observation. Having the ranks of feature-set data, the contour boxplot is a natural extension of the classical boxplot which in special cases reduces back to the traditional functional boxplot.
Set/contour band depth.
Set band depth (introduced in ), denoted as sBD, is a method for establishing a center-outward ordering of a collection of sets. As with other band depth, data ordering methods, set band depth, computes the probability of whether a sample lies in the band formed by "j" other samples from the distribution. We say that a set "S" ∈ "E" is an element of the band of a collection of "j" other sets "S"1, ..., "S""j" ∈ "E" if it is bounded by their union and intersection. That is:
The set band depth is the sum of probabilities of lying in bands formed by different numbers of samples (2, ..., "J").
Set band depth is shown to be a generalization of function band depth. Set band depth has a modified form that is derived from a relaxed form of subset, which requires only a percentage of a set to be included in another.
Contour band depth (cBD) is a direct application of sBD, where the sets are derived from thresholded input functions, "F"("x") > "q". In this way, an ensemble of scalar input functions and a threshold value, gives rise to a collection of contours, and sorting cBD gives a data-depth ordering (highest-to-lowest probability gives greatest-to-smallest depth) of those contours. By relying on the set formulation, contour boxplots avoid any explicit correspondence of points on different contours.
Contour boxplot construction.
In the classical boxplot, the box itself represents the middle 50% of the data. Since the data ordering in the contour boxplot is from the center outwards, the 50% central region is defined by the band delimited by the 50% of deepest, or the most central observations. The border of the 50% central region is defined as the envelope representing the box in a classical boxplot. Thus, this 50% central region is the analog to the interquartile range (IQR) and gives a useful indication of the spread of the central 50% of the curves. This is a robust range for interpretation because the 50% central region is not affected by outliers or extreme values, and gives a less biased visualization of the curves' spread. The observation in the box indicates the median, or the most central observation which is also a robust statistic to measure centrality.
The "whiskers" of the boxplot are the vertical lines of the plot extending from the box and indicating the maximum envelope of the dataset except the outliers. In contour boxplots, this is formed by considering the difference of the union and intersection formed by all non-outlying samples. Outliers are determined as having a cBD value that is less than some multiplier (less than one) times the cBD of the 50% ranked samples.
Examples.
The following example is an ensemble of data from 2D incompressible Navier–Stokes simulation consisting of 40 members, where each ensemble member is a simulation with Reynolds number and inlet velocity chosen randomly. The inlet velocity values are randomly drawn from a normal distribution with mean value of 1 and standard deviation of ±0.01 (in non-dimensionalized units); likewise, Reynolds numbers are generated from a normal distribution with mean value of 130 and standard deviation of ±3.
The example below is from an ensemble of publicly available data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [1]. The ensemble data are formed through different runs of a simulation model with different perturbations of the initial conditions to account for the errors in the initial conditions and/or model parameterizations. The ensemble consists of isocontours of the temperature field (isovalue −15C) at 500mb in altitude.


Orders of magnitude (charge)

This article is a progressive and labeled list of the SI charge orders of magnitude, with certain examples appended to some list objects.


Joe West (Arrowverse)

Joseph West is a fictional character portrayed by Jesse L. Martin in The CW's Arrowverse franchise. Created by Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg, the character was introduced in the pilot episode of "The Flash". He is the foster father (later father-in-law) of protagonist Barry Allen / Flash, father of Iris West, Wally West, and Jenna West. Joe works at the Central City Police Department initially as a detective, heading its metahuman task force, and later as the captain, aiding Barry in keeping Central City safe from superpowered and dangerous criminals. Martin has received positive reviews for his performance as Joe.
Fictional character biography.
In season one, Central City Police Department (CCPD) detective Joe West becomes the legal guardian to his neighbor Barry Allen after the boy's mother Nora was murdered and his father Henry convicted. Joe remains convinced Henry killed Nora, despite Barry's insistence of witnessing mysterious speedsters fighting that night and pursuit of other claims of metahuman activities to establish Henry's innocence. Several year later, Joe realizes that Barry may have been right after the S.T.A.R. Labs' particle accelerator explodes and transforms Barry and other Central City individuals into metahumans. He aids in Barry's crime-fighting efforts as the costumed speedster known as the Flash and agrees to help exonerate Henry. Joe becomes one of the few who knows Barry's secret early on, alongside Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon, and he tells Barry to not reveal this secret for his daughter Iris's safety. Joe is aware that Iris and his partner Eddie Thawne have been dating, and although initially a bit upset, ultimately gives them his blessing. Joe secretly investigates S.T.A.R. Labs' director Harrison Wells. He, Barry, Caitlin and Cisco ultimately discover "Wells" is actually Eobard Thawne, Nora's killer. Joe is powerless when Eddie sacrifices himself to erase Thawne (his descendant) seemingly from existence.
In season two, Joe becomes head of the CCPD's metahuman task-force, working with Cisco and Patty Spivot. He relies on Cisco's inventions to deal with superhuman criminals and becomes a mentor to the two. Joe later struggles with his disintegrated marriage when his estranged wife Francine resurfaces. He later tells Iris, who believed her mother was dead based on Joe's lies, that Francine is actually alive and a former addict. Francine reveals to Joe that she is dying of a terminal illness; Iris learns that Francine had given birth to Joe's son eight months after leaving him, and initially hides this fact from her father. Supported by Barry, Iris ultimately tells Joe about his son, Wally who eventually shows up at their home. Once they are introduced, their connection is uneasy; Joe is unsure of how to be a father to Wally, and Wally is somewhat resentful that his detective father was not there for him. But after Hunter Zolomon kidnaps Wally, father and son become close. After Wally is exposed to Harry Wells's dark matter experiment, Joe suspects he has become a metahuman. Joe gets captured during an attempt to neutralize Zolomon, however, Barry defeats Zolomon and saves the multiverse.
In season three, Joe experiences radical differences after Barry creates the alternate Flashpoint timeline. Changes to Joe's life are made even after the timeline is reset, primarily that he and Iris are not speaking because Joe never said that Francine was alive. However, they settle matters after Barry reveals the timeline changes. Joe fears for Wally's life after discovering Wally's dreams as a speedster and was badly injured in the erased timeline. After Wally becomes a speedster, however, Joe eventually accepts his son's destiny thanks to H. R. Wells. He also begins to move on from his widowhood by dating Cecile Horton. After the demise of Savitar, Barry decides to atone for creating Flashpoint by entering the Speed Force, entrusting Central City to Joe and Team Flash.
In season four, Joe learns that Cecile is pregnant with his child. Having a child young enough to be their grandchild causes him and Cecile to initially experience a midlife crisis. Joe and Cecile attend Barry and Iris' wedding ceremony, but it is suddenly interrupted by invaders from the Nazi-dominated Earth-X led by Dark Arrow and his Kryptonian wife Overgirl. Barry and his allies fight the invaders, while Wally takes Joe and Cecile to safety. After the deaths of Dark Arrow and Overgirl, John Diggle officiates Barry and Iris' wedding in an impromptu ceremony despite Joe's absence. When Barry is on trial after being framed for Clifford DeVoe's "murder", Joe considers framing DeVoe's wife Marlize to prove Barry's innocence, but is talked out of doing it by Ralph Dibny. After Barry is exonerated, Joe is among those who celebrate with him. When Cecile goes into labor during Barry's final battle with DeVoe, Joe stays by Cecile as Caitlin helps to deliver their child; following DeVoe's demise, he and Cecile later name their newborn daughter Jenna Marie West. His friends and family also meet Nora West-Allen, Barry and Iris' future daughter and therefore Joe's yet-to-be born granddaughter.
In season five, Barry tells Joe that Nora is beginning to annoy him by spending so much time with him. Joe pacifies Barry by revealing that Nora's situation is identical to Barry's when he was a child. Joe is later held hostage by the masked serial killer Cicada, but saved due to Cisco's intervention. He later tells Iris he thinks Cicada is a father because of how he held Jenna's blanket and talked about family while holding his hostage. After Nora's relationship with Iris worsens, she decides to stay with Joe for a while. Eventually, using all the information gathered by Joe and Team Flash, detective Sherloque Wells announces Cicada's true identity: Orlin Dwyer. After the defeat of Dwyer, and his niece's alternate future self Cicada II, and the erasure of Nora from the timeline, Joe commiserates with Barry and Iris over their loss. CCPD captain David Singh, having been promoted to Chief of Police, names Joe as his replacement.
In season six, Wally voices his suspicions about Iris' recent behavior to Joe; both are unaware that "Iris" is an impostor and the real one is trapped in a dimension called the Mirrorverse. Joe starts to investigate businessman Joseph Carver, who sends Ragdoll to kill him. After Joe's car is sabotaged, Singh urges him to go into witness protection; but he refuses. Following the different attacks by Ragdoll where one had Sunshine sprung from police custody and another had Cecile's life threatened, Joe accepts Singh's offer, unaware that "Singh" is actually an impostor from the Mirrorverse, and the real Singh's whereabouts unknown. Barry, having realized what happened to Iris, visits Joe and tells him about this. Following Carver's murder, Joe is released from witness protection and joins forces with Team Flash to rescue Iris from the Mirrorverse.
Development.
Executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg, and DC Comics CCO Geoff Johns, created the character of Joe West for the CW series "The Flash". In January 2014, Jesse L. Martin was cast in the role, described as "an honest, blue-collar cop who is a surrogate father to Barry", and the biological father of Iris West. Although Barry's foster father in the comics is Darryl Frye, and Iris' father during the Bronze Age of Comic Books was Ira West, and William West since the launch of the New 52, Joe West is an original creation for the TV series. However, like Iris' family in the comics since the launch of the New 52, he and Iris were written as African-American for the TV series. Regarding Joe's relationship with Barry, Martin said, "When something is bothering [Barry], he will come to [Joe]. He won't go to Harrison Wells to talk about his real life. He comes to [Joe]." Martin also reprised his role in the TV series "Supergirl" (also part of the Arrowverse franchise along with "The Flash") in that series' episode of the four-part crossover event "Crisis on Earth-X". In season five of "The Flash", Joe made less appearances due to Martin taking a medical leave of absence after suffering a back injury, and thus Joe became an unseen character before Martin's return.
Critical reception.
Reviewing the pilot episode of "The Flash", IGN's Jesse Schedeen praised the dynamic between Joe and Barry, calling it "solid". In 2015, Leah Thomas of "Bustle" ranked Joe fifth in her list of "original characters who help complete DC Comics' TV Universe". Irina Curovic of "Comic Book Resources" felt that Joe lacked a clear purpose in season 3 since, unlike the first two seasons where he was an important ally for Barry in catching criminals, "the third season mostly used Joe for the purposes of exposition". She felt that for this reason, the series no longer needed him. "Screen Rant"s Jason Berman ranked Martin eighth on his 2016 list "20 Best Actors in the Arrowverse". The following year, Katerina Daley of the same website included Joe in her list "7 Best (And 8 Worst) Arrowverse Characters", saying, "One of the most loving and committed fathers on television right now, Joe West portrayed with beautiful conviction by the esteemed Jesse L. Martin, is everything that a father should be."


High energy X-ray imaging technology

High energy X-ray imaging technology (HEXITEC) is a family of spectroscopic, single photon counting, pixel detectors developed for high energy X-ray and Ύ-ray spectroscopy applications.
The HEXITEC consortium was formed in 2006 funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK. The consortium is led by the University of Manchester; other members include the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the University of Surrey, Durham University and University of London, Birkbeck. In 2010 the consortium expanded to include the Royal Surrey County Hospital and the University College London. The vision of the consortium was to "develop a UK-based capability in high energy X-ray imaging technology". It is now available commercially through Quantum Detectors.
High energy X-ray imaging technology.
X-ray spectroscopy is a powerful experimental technique that provides qualitative information about the elemental composition and internal stresses and strain within a specimen. High energy X-rays have the ability to penetrate deeply into materials allowing the examination of dense objects such as welds in steel, geological core sections bearing oil or gas or for the internal observation of chemical reactions inside heavy plant or machinery. Different experimental techniques such as X-ray fluorescence imaging and X-Ray diffraction imaging require X-ray detectors that are sensitive over a broad range of energies. Established semiconductor detector technology based on silicon and germanium have excellent energy resolution at X-ray energies under 30 keV but above this, due to a reduction in the material mass attenuation coefficient, the detection efficiency is dramatically reduced. To detect high energy X-rays, detectors produced from higher density materials are required.
High density, compound semiconductors such as cadmium telluride (CdTe), cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe), gallium arsenide (GaAs), mercuric iodide or thallium bromide have been the subject of extensive research for use in high energy X-ray detection. The favorable charge transport properties and high electrical resistivity of CdTe and CdZnTe have made them ideally suited to applications requiring spectroscopy at higher X-ray energies. Imaging applications, such as SPECT, require detectors with a pixelated electrode that allow objects to be imaged in 2D and 3D. Each pixel of the detector requires its own chain of readout electronics and for a highly pixelated detector this requires the use of a high sensitivity application-specific integrated circuit.
The HEXITEC ASIC.
The HEXITEC application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was developed for the consortium by the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The initial prototype consisted of an array of 20 x 20 pixels on a 250μm pitch fabricated using a 0.35μm CMOS process; the second generation of the ASIC expanded the array size to 80 x 80 pixels (4 cm2). Each ASIC pixel contains a charge amplifier, a CR-RC shaping amplifier and a peak track-and-hold circuit. The ASIC records the position and total charge deposited for each X-ray event detected.
The PIXIE ASIC.
The PIXIE ASIC is a research and development ASIC developed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for the consortium. The ASIC is being used to investigate charge induction and the small pixel effect in semiconductor detectors as described by the Shockley–Ramo theorem. The ASIC consists of three separate arrays of 3 x 3 pixels on a 250μm pitch and a single array of 3 x 3 pixels on a 500μm pitch. Each pixel contains a charge amplifier and output buffer allowing the induced charge pulses of each pixel to be recorded.
HEXITEC detectors.
HEXITEC ASICs are flip-chip bonded to a direct conversion semiconductor detector using a low temperature (~100 °C) curing silver epoxy and gold stud technique in a hybrid detector arrangement. The X-ray detector layer is a semiconductor, typically cadmium telluride (CdTe) or cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe), between 1 – 3 mm thick. The detectors consist of a planar cathode and a pixelated anode and are operated under a negative bias voltage. X-ray and Ύ-rays interacting within the detector layer form charge clouds of electron-hole pairs which drift from the cathode to the anode pixels. The charge drifting across the detectors induce charge on the ASIC pixels as described by the Shockley–Ramo theorem which form the detected signal. The detectors are capable of measuring an X-ray/Ύ-ray photo-peak FWHM of the order 1 keV in the energy range 3 - 200 keV.
Applications.
HEXITEC detectors are in use in a number of different application areas including:
materials science, medical imaging, illicit material detection,
and X-ray astronomy.


ISO/TC 289

ISO/TC 289 Brand evaluation is Technical Committee n.289 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) formed in 2014 to develop standards in the area of Brand evaluation.
History.
In January 2014 the Technical management Board of ISO (TMB) took the decision to create a new ISO Technical committee called ISO/TC 289.
The first plenary meeting was held on 2014 September 25–26 in Beijing, hosted by Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and China Council for Brand Development (CCBD).
The first meeting of ISO/TC 289/WG1 was held by China Council for Brand Development in Shenzhen (China), from November 11 to 12, 2015.
The first meeting of ISO/TC 289/WG2 was held by UNI (Italian Standardization Body) in Rome (Italy), from January 21 to 23, 2019.
Scope.
The current scope of ISO/TC 289 primarily focuses on standardization in the field of brand evaluation. The
main activity of ISO/TC 289 is to develop international standards supporting the international practice
of brand evaluation and brand management .
Leadership and organization.
ISO/TC 289 currently has the following organisation.
ISO/TC 289 has 12 Participating countries and 24 Observer countries.
Published standards.
published ISO standards under the direct responsibility of ISO/TC 289:
Brand evaluation
ISO standards under development with the direct responsibility of ISO/TC 289:


Broadband acoustic resonance dissolution spectroscopy

Broadband acoustic resonance dissolution spectroscopy (also known as BARDS) is a technique developed in the late 2000s, which is used in analytical chemistry. It involves the analysis of the changes in sound frequency generated when a solute dissolves in a solvent, by harnessing the hot chocolate effect first described by Frank S. Crawford.
The technique is partly based on the solubility difference of gas in pure solvents and in solutions. The dissolution of a compound in a pure solvent results in the generation of gas bubbles in the solvent, due to the lowering of gas solubility in the resulting solution, as well as the introduction of gases with the solute. The presence of these gas bubbles increases the compressibility of the solution, thereby lowering the velocity of sound in the solution. This effect can be monitored by means of the frequency change of acoustic resonances that are mechanically produced in the solvent.
Principles of the BARDS response.
Water is approximately 800 times more dense than air. However, air is approximately 15,000 times more compressible than water. The velocity of sound, "υ", in a homogeneous liquid or gas is given by the following equation:
where ρ is the mass density and K the compressibility of the gas or liquid. K is given as:
where V is the volume of the medium, and dV is the volume decrease due to the pressure increase dp of the sound wave. When water is filled with air bubbles, the fluid density is essentially the density of water, and the air will contribute significantly to the compressibility. Crawford derived the relationship between fractional bubble volume and sound velocity in water, and hence the sound frequency in water, given as.
where "υw" and "υ" are the velocities of sound in pure and bubble-filled water, respectively, "fw" and "f" are the frequencies of sound in pure and bubble-filled water, respectively, Va is defined as the fractional volume occupied by gas bubbles, and "α" is a constant. When the solvent is water and the gas is air, the value of "α" is 1.49 × 104.
The effect of changes in solution density and solution compressibility are additive and reinforce the phenomenon, causing a significant decrease in the velocity of sound and, therefore, a significant decrease in the frequency of sound passing through an aerated solution.
Applications.
BARDS has significant potential as an analytical technique. Applications researched so far include:


Swimming with Men

Swimming with Men is a 2018 British comedy film starring Rob Brydon, Jane Horrocks, Rupert Graves, Daniel Mays, Thomas Turgoose, Jim Carter, Adeel Akhtar and Charlotte Riley. It was directed by Oliver Parker.
Screenwriter Aschlin Ditta based the script on the 2010 Swedish documentary "Men Who Swim".
Plot.
When accountant Eric (Brydon) seeks to win back his wife Heather (Horrocks), he stumbles upon a solution in the form of a male synchronised swimming team: Men Who Swim. Joining his local team, Eric finds brotherhood in this crew as they train for the World Championships in Milan.
Production.
The scenes from the championship competition were filmed at the 25 x 50 metre pool in Basildon Sporting Village.
Release.
The film closed the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 1 July 2018. It went on general release in the UK on 4 July.
Reception.
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 44% based on reviews from 25 critics. The site's consensus states: "Swimming with Men touches on thought-provoking themes surrounding modern masculinity, but ultimately never manages to do much more than tread water."
Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" gave the film 3/5. "Empire" gave it two stars and compared it unfavorably to "The Full Monty".


Identification Projection Series

Identification Projection Series ( IPS ) refers to a projective technique used in psychotherapy.
IPS is related to other, more established, projective methods in psychotherapy such as the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). A more recent projective method with a higher degree of validity is the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP).
IPS is based on two sets of 40 pictures based on paintings or photographs. One set contains various stages and possibilities of male and the other the female socialization.
Purpose.
IPS is used to elicit emotional responses from a client. According to the principles of IPS, art is particularly well-suited to elicit strong responses from a client because the works of art contain the psychological energies of the artist, which can be reproduced by the client through empathy. Another purpose of IPS is to increase the client's awareness of recurring themes throughout his or her biography.
The IPS pictures can further assume a catalytic function during therapy. The pictures elicit emotional or physical responses, associations, set in motion thought processes and may trigger identification, projection or other defense mechanisms. The interpretation of the client's responses is aimed at the integration of previously unvoiced subjects and themes into therapy.
Administration.
The client is given the 40 cards and asked to sort them into two stacks: “meaningful” and “not meaningful”, according to the client's emotional and physical responses. The client is asked to review the pictures one by one. He is asked to focus on changes in mood or emotions during the viewing process. Pictures that elicit physical or emotional reactions or elicit a memory are placed onto the “meaningful” stack.
The subset of “meaningful” picture is distributed into new categories: according to the current state in the therapeutic process, these can be: “past”, “present”, and “future”; “inside” and “outside”; “dreams” or “therapy session”.
Basics for interpretation of results:
A written protocol is required to interpret the responses. The following elements are protocolled:
There has been no reliable psychometric data collection and evaluation for IPS. The qualitative analysis of the client's verbal responses can be conducted with the evaluation scheme by Lester Luborsky, Kurt Lewin or David McClelland. The analysis aims to make inferences of recurring themes in the client's biography and personality traits.


Infrared multiphoton dissociation

Infrared multiple photon dissociation (IRMPD) is a technique used in mass spectrometry to fragment molecules in the gas phase usually for structural analysis of the original (parent) molecule.
How it works.
An infrared laser is directed through a window into the vacuum of the mass spectrometer where the ions are. The mechanism of fragmentation involves the absorption by a given ion of multiple infrared photons. The parent ion becomes excited into more energetic vibrational states until a bond(s) is broken resulting in gas phase fragments of the parent ion. In the case of powerful laser pulses, the dissociation proceeds via inner-valence ionization of electrons.
IRMPD is most often used in Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry.
Infrared photodissociation spectroscopy.
By applying intense tunable IR lasers, like IR-OPOs or IR free electron lasers, the wavelength dependence of the IRMPD yield can be studied. This infrared photodissociation spectroscopy allows for the measurement of vibrational spectra of (unstable) species that can only be prepared in the gas phase. Such species include molecular ions but also neutral species like metal clusters that can be gently ionized after interaction with the IR light for their mass spectrometric detection.
Analytical applications of IRMPD.
The combination of mass spectrometry and IRMPD with tunable lasers (IR ion spectroscopy) is increasingly recognized as a powerful tool for small-molecule identification. Examples are metabomics, where biomarkers are indentified in body fluids (urine, blood, cerebrospinal) and forensic sciences, where isomeric designer drugs were identified in seized samples.
Isotope separation.
Due to the relatively large differences in IR absorption frequencies that are due to different resonance frequencies for molecules containing different isotopes, this technique has been suggested as a way to perform Isotope separation with difficult-to-separate isotopes, in a single pass. For example, molecules of UF6 containing U-235 might be ionized completely as a result of such a laser resonance, leaving UF6 containing the heavier U-238 intact.


3262 Miune


Somali units of measurement

A number of units of measurement were used in Somalia to measure length, mass, area, capacity, etc. Metric system adopted in 1950, and has been compulsory since 1972 in Somalia.
System before metric system.
A number of units were used. These units were local and varied with materials and provinces.
Length.
Several units were used to measure length. One top was equal to 3.92 m. One cubito was equal to 1/7 top.
Mass.
A number of units were used to measure mass. One rottolo (pound) was equal to 0.448 kg. Some other units are given below:
1 okia (ounce) = rottolo
1 frasla = 36 rottolo
1 gisla = 360 rottolo.
Area.
One darat was equal to 8000 m2.
Capacity.
Two main systems, dry and liquid, were used.
Dry.
Several units were used to measure dry capacity. One chela was equal to 1.359 l. Some other units were given below:
1 tabla = 15 chela
1 gisla = 120 chela.
Liquid.
One caba was equal to 0.453 l.


4332 Milton

4332 Milton, provisional designation , is a background asteroid from the central regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 5 September 1983, by American astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California. The Xe-subtype has a rotation period of 3.3 hours. It was named after Daniel Milton, American geologist with the USGS.
Orbit and classification.
"Milton" is a non-family asteroid from the main belt's background population. It orbits the Sun in the central asteroid belt at a distance of 1.8–3.4 AU once every 4 years and 2 months (1,518 days; semi-major axis of 2.58 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.32 and an inclination of 19° with respect to the ecliptic.
The asteroid was first observed as at Heidelberg Observatory in September 1933. The body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Palomar in September 1983.
Physical characteristics.
In the SMASS classification, "Milton" is a Xe-subtype that transitions between the X-type and E-type asteroids. It has also been characterized as a carbonaceous C-type by Pan-STARRS large-scale survey.
Rotation period.
In September 2008, a rotational lightcurve of "Milton" was obtained from photometric observations by Julian Oey at the Kingsgrove and Leura observatories. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 3.2978 hours with a brightness variation of 0.30 magnitude (). In August 2012, a refined period of 3.295 hours and an amplitude of 0.16 magnitude was measured by Afşar Kabaş at the Çanakkale University Observatory in Turkey ().
Diameter and albedo.
According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, "Milton" measures between 11.500 and 11.54 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.1002 and 0.2306.
The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" derives an albedo of 0.1158 and a diameter of 11.26 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.7.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Daniel J. Milton (born 1934), American geologist with the United States Geological Survey, known for his geological studies of the Moon and Mars, as well as for research on impact craters and features in Australia. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 30 January 1991 ().


3687 Dzus

3687 Dzus, provisional designation , is a carbonaceous asteroid from the central region of the asteroid belt, approximately 31 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by German astronomer August Kopff at Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory on 7 October 1908.
Orbit and classification.
"Dzus" orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.2–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 6 months (1,645 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.20 and an inclination of 16° with respect to the ecliptic. As no precoveries were taken, the asteroid's observation arc begins with its discovery observation in 1908.
Physical characteristics.
The C-type asteroid is characterized as a Ch subtype in the SMASS classification.
Diameter and albedo.
According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, "Dzus" measures between 28.6 and 34.5 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.038 and 0.054. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" agrees with the results obtained by IRAS; that is an albedo of 0.038 and a diameter of 28.6 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 11.5.
Rotation period.
A fragmentary lightcurve of "Dzus" was obtained from photometric observations made by Robert Stephens at the Santana Observatory () in Rancho Cucamonga, California, during April to June 2002. It showed a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of in magnitude during each rotation ().
Naming.
This minor planet was named by Brian Geoffrey Marsden, long-time director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC), in honor of Paul K. Dzus (b. 1969) in appreciation of his helpful assistance since October 1987, much of the time as a volunteer. The official naming citation was published by the MPC on 23 December 1988 ().


Nairanjana Dasgupta

Nairanjana (Jan) Dasgupta is an Indian statistician at Washington State University, where she is Boeing Distinguished Professor in Mathematics and Statistics. Her research interests include large-scale multiple testing in bioinformatics as well as applications involving nutrition and lactation, and the growth of apples.
Education and career.
Dasgupta graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata in 1990, with a bachelor's degree in statistics and minors in mathematics and economics. She went to the University of South Carolina for graduate study in statistics. She earned a master's degree in 1994 with a thesis supervised by Stephen Durham on hyperfinite probability theory, and completed her Ph.D. in 1996. Her doctoral advisor was John Spurrier, and her dissertation, on logistic regression, was "Comparison to control in logistic regression".
She joined the statistics faculty at Washington State University in 1996, and became the director of the newly established Center of Interdisciplinary Statistics Education and Research there in 2015.
Recognition.
Dasgupta was named Boeing Distinguished Professor of Math and Science Education at Washington State University in 2017. In 2018, she was named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.


ISO Development Environment

The ISODE software (pronounced eye-soo-dee-eee), more formally the "ISO Development Environment", was an implementation of the OSI upper layer protocols, from transport layer to application layer, which was used in the Internet research community to experiment with implementation and deployment of OSI during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The ISODE software was initially a public domain / open source implementation, led by Marshall Rose. Following version 6.0, Marshall handed the lead over to Colin Robbins and Julian Onions, who coordinated the 7.0 and 8.0 releases. Version 8.0 was the final public domain release, made on June 19, 1992. The Open Source version is still available, even if only for historic interest. The software was ported to a wide set of Unix and Linux variants.
ISODE Stack.
The ISODE stack
was an implementation of layers 3 to 6 of the OSI model. While the ISODE implementation could be configured to use one of several X.25 (CONS) or connectionless lower layer protocols, many ISODE deployments were based on RFC1006, the implementation of OSI transport protocol TP0 as a layer atop TCP, in order to use IP-based networks which were becoming increasingly common.
The stack also implemented an ASN.1 compiler.
Applications.
The ISODE Stack was the basis for a number of .
PP.
ISODE formed the basis an implementation for the X.400 email protocol, called PP. PP included a fully operational SMTP/MIME email server and an X.400/SMTP Mixer gateway.
PP also implemented a P7 Messagestore (PPMS).
PP was designed by Steve Kille and the lead engineer was Julian Onions.
Quipu.
ISODE had a full X.500 and LDAP directory called QUIPU ("incorrectly" pronounced kwip-ooo by the project). Quipu implemented a DSA and a Directory User Agent (DUA) called DISH. X.500 was considered too heavyweight to access directories, Colin Robbins implemented a proprietary protocol to solve the problem, this was then significantly re-worked by Tim Howes for DIXIE which led to the development of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
QUIPU was designed by Kille and the lead engineer was Robbins, largely funded by the INCA project, and used extensively in the Paradise academic X.500 directory pilot.
FTAM.
ISODE contained and implementation of FTAM, and implemented an FTAM-FTP gateway.
VT.
ISODE contained a virtual terminal (VT) implementation and a VT-Telnet gateway.
OSISEC.
ISODE has a full implementation of a PKI Certificate Authority built on top of it by the OSISEC project.
OSISEC was developed by Mike Roe & Peter Williams and integrated into ISODE by Robbins.
OSIMIS.
ISODE has a full implementation of a CMIP/TMN built on top of it by the OSIMIS project.
Contributors.
The following people or groups were listed in the ISODE 8.0 manual as the significant contributors
Commercialisation.
Several companies used the ISODE software to build successful commercial products and services including (alphabetical order):


Shearing interferometer

The shearing interferometer is an extremely simple means to observe interference and to use this phenomenon to test the collimation of light beams, especially from laser sources which have a coherence length which is usually significantly longer than the thickness of the shear plate (see graphics) so that the basic condition for interference is fulfilled.
Function.
The testing device consists of a high-quality optical glass, like N-BK7, with extremely flat optical surfaces that are usually at a slight angle to each other. When a plane wave is incident at an angle of 45°, which gives maximum sensitivity, it is reflected two times. The two reflections are laterally separated due to the finite thickness of the plate and by the wedge. This separation is referred to as the "shear" and has given the instrument its name. The shear can also be produced by gratings, see "External Links" below.
Parallel-sided shear plates are sometimes used, but the interpretation of the interference fringes of wedged plates is relatively easy and straightforward. Wedged shear plates produce a graded path difference between the front and back surface reflections; as a consequence, a parallel beam of light produces a linear fringe pattern within the overlap.
With a plane wavefront incident, the overlap of the two reflected beams shows interference fringes with a spacing of formula_1, where formula_2 is the spacing perpendicular to shear, "formula_3" is the wavelength of the beam, "n" the refractive index, and "formula_4" the wedge angle. This equation makes the simplification that the distance from the wedged shear plate to the observation plane is small relative to the wavefront radius of curvature at the observation plane. The fringes are equally spaced and will be exactly perpendicular to the wedge orientation and parallel to a usually present wire cursor aligned along the beam axis in the shearing interferometer. The orientation of the fringes varies when the beam is not perfectly collimated. In the case of a noncollimated beam incident on a wedged shear plate, the path difference between the two reflected wavefronts is increased or decreased from the case of perfect collimation depending on the sign of the curvature. The pattern is then rotated and the beam's wavefront radius of curvature "formula_5" can be calculated: formula_6, with "formula_7" the shear distance, "formula_2" the fringe distance, "formula_3" the wavelength and "formula_10" the angular deviation of the fringe alignment from that of perfect collimation. If the spacing normal to the fringes is used instead, this equation becomes formula_11, where formula_12 is the fringe spacing normal to the fringes.


Eco-map

An eco-map (or ecomap) is a graphical representation that shows all of the systems at play in an individual's life. Eco-maps are used in individual and family counseling within the social work and nursing profession. They are often a way of portraying Systems Theory in a simplistic way that both the social worker and the client can look at during the session. These ecological maps, or ecomaps, were developed by Hartman in 1975 as a means of depicting the ecological system that encompasses a family or individual.
An ecogram is a combination of a genogram and an ecomap. The terms "ecogram" and "ecomap" are often used interchangeably, however.
Symbols.
At the center of the eco-map is the client (this can either be a family or individual). They are depicted in the center of the circle. Family connections are shown. There are also connections from all of the relevant systems that are at play in the clients life. These systems are connected to either individuals or the entire circle by line:
Other uses.
In the context of ecology, "ecogram" can also refer to a kind of Venn diagram used to depict the niches a plant may live in, depending on the environmental conditions, especially used in forestry. See e.g. .


Degree (temperature)

The term degree is used in several scales of temperature. The symbol ° is usually used, followed by the initial letter of the unit, for example “°C” for degree(s) Celsius. A degree can be defined as a set change in temperature measured against a given scale, for example, one degree Celsius is one hundredth of the temperature change between the point at which water starts to change state from solid to liquid state and the point at which it starts to change from its liquid to gaseous state.
Scales of temperature measured in degrees.
Common scales of temperature measured in degrees:
Unlike the degree Fahrenheit and degree Celsius, the kelvin is not referred to or written as a degree. The kelvin is the primary unit of temperature measurement in the physical sciences, but is often used in conjunction with the degree Celsius, which has the same magnitude.
Other scales of temperature:
Kelvin.
 (Measurement of temperature)
"Degrees Kelvin" (°K) is a former name for the SI unit of temperature on the thermodynamic (absolute) temperature scale. Since 1967 it has been known simply as the kelvin, with symbol K (without a degree symbol). Degree absolute (°A) is obsolete terminology, often referring specifically to the kelvin but sometimes the degree Rankine as well.
Temperature conversions.
All three of the major units of temperature are linearly dependent, and so the conversion between any of them is relatively straightforward. For instance, any temperature formula_1 measured in °C can be calculated from a corresponding value formula_2 in degrees Fahrenheit or formula_3 Kelvin, by
formula_4
The equations above may also be rearranged to solve for formula_2 or formula_3, to give
formula_7


Gravity Records

Gravity is an underground independent record label from San Diego. It was formed in 1991 by Matt Anderson, a member of the influential underground band Heroin. It has been central in developing and promoting the "San Diego sound" – an idiosyncratic form of post-hardcore with loose, chaotic musicianship and vocals, initiated by Heroin, Antioch Arrow, and Clikatat Ikatowi, as well as Mohinder from the Bay Area and Angel Hair from Colorado. The sound is associated with the first wave of screamo, and the label played an important role in the development of post-hardcore in the 1990s. Gravity has also branched out into other forms of experimental or independent music, releasing seminal early works by Unwound, Black Dice, The Rapture, and a full-length from Man Is The Bastard.
Discography.
This list is organized by catalog number. Also note that two releases that have the catalog number 2 and, there is no release in the Gravity Records catalog to have the catalog number 50.


The Sour Thunder

The Sour Thunder is a studio recording of Mendi + Keith Obadike's internet opera. The opera was commissioned by the Yale Cabaret and supported by the Digital Media Center at Yale. It was performed live in 2002 at two locations (Yale Cabaret and Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale) on Yale's campus and streamed to the web.


Floor slip resistance testing

Floor slip resistance testing is the science of measuring the coefficient of friction (or resistance to slip accidents) of flooring surfaces, either in a laboratory (before or after installation) or on floors in situ. Slip resistance testing (or floor friction testing) is usually desired by the building's owner or manager when there has been a report of a slip and fall accident, when there has been a report of a near accident, or (preferably) before the flooring is installed on the property. Flooring is tested using a tribometer (floor slip resistance tester) to discover if there is a high propensity for slip and fall accidents on it, either dry and/or (most often) when wet with water or lubricated with other contaminants such as kitchen grease, hydraulic oil, etc. There have been numerous floor slip resistance testing tribometers and lab devices produced around the world to measure both the static (stationary) and dynamic (in motion) coefficient of friction, but presently there are only a few that have been proven to be reliable for obtaining useful safety results and that have current official test methods. If an instrument has no official published test method, then there is a problem with the instrument, often being poor precision.
To assess a floor's slip resistance, a reliable, thoroughly researched (in interlaboratory studies) floor friction test method must be used, and then a minimum safety criterion (0.43, 0.60, 36, etc.) is needed to apply to the results. Each different slip test device will have its own safety criterion. If the floor is likely to be lubricated with water or grease in use, it needs to be anti-slip under these expected conditions. Floor slip resistance testing can be carried out dry, wet with water, or lubricated with oils and other contaminants. Dry slip resistance is not an indicator of wet slip resistance — in fact the two often vary inversely — so reliable wet slip resistance testing is often needed as well as reliable dry testing.
Test methods and safety criteria.
Pendulum slip resistance tester (outdated SEE BOT-3000E Tribometer).
 The ASTM E303-93 (United States), BS EN 13036-4:2011 (United Kingdom and many other European nations) slip resistance test standards, AS 4663:2013 - "Slip resistance of existing pedestrian surfaces", and AS 4586:2013 - "Slip resistance classification of new pedestrian surface materials" (Australia/New Zealand), define the pendulum tester that is now a national standard for pedestrian slip resistance in at least 50 nations on five continents and has been endorsed by Ceramic Tile Institute of America since 2001. It is the most widely used pedestrian slip resistance test method worldwide. It has passed the ASTM F2508 in published studies (see BOT-3000E section for more information on F2508). The pendulum uses a standardized piece of rubber (FourS rubber also known as Slider 96), which is set up to travel across the flooring sample for 123-125mm, mounted onto the pendulum foot. When the arm of the pendulum is set up to miss the flooring completely, the arm swings up to parallel from where it started, and the pointer (brought along by the arm holding the rubber slider) reads zero. Slippery flooring produces readings close to zero, and flooring which show higher resistance to slipping give results further from zero—high numbers (such as those 36 and above) indicating suitable slip resistant flooring.
The United Kingdom has since 1971 had well-established slip resistance standards based on the pendulum. This test was developed for pedestrian traction by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in the 1940s and further refined in the UK. It was validated for pedestrian traction in 1971, together with its safety standards, in the UK over a period of 25 years by 3500 real-world public walking area tests and site accident records. The test is an ASTM standard (E 303), slightly modified for pedestrian traction. The usual safety standard for a level floor is a minimum Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of 36. The pendulum is also the instrument used in the Sustainable Slip Resistance test method, which measures the possible impact of years of use on a potential flooring's slip resistance. The pendulum is also used in the U.S. and elsewhere for determining the slipperiness of roads and airport runways.
Standards Australia HB 197:1999 as well as Standards Australia HB 198:2014 give detailed recommendations/guidelines of minimum wet Pendulum Test Slip Resistance Values for many different situations in AS4586-2013: e.g. external ramps, 54; external walkways and pedestrian crossings, 45; shopping center food courts, 35; and elevator lobbies above external entry level may be 25 or less. There are also barefoot area recommendations based on pendulum tests with a soft rubber slider (TRL rubber also known as Slider 55). The Australian recommendations are presently the world's most detailed standards for pedestrian wet slip resistance.
BOT-3000E slip tester.
 America's ANSI A326.3 test standard is essentially for use of the BOT-3000E digital tribometer, which measures dynamic friction at a lower speed than the pendulum. The BOT-3000E is a drag-sled meter, which means that it crawls along the floor under its own power at a constant speed measuring the resistance to slip of a standardized piece of rubber loaded into the bottom of the machine. The BOT-3000E performs a test without human input except for the pressing of a button, making it more difficult for the operator to manipulate the results of the test.
The ANSI A137.1 test method for assessing floor friction (indoor, level floors only) was referenced in the definition of porcelain tile 2012 International Building Code. The 2012 International Building Code, as sold by the International Code Council, does not strictly adopt ANSI A137.1 with respect to floor surface testing. In fact, the 2015 version of the International Building Code no longer includes any reference to this test. However, municipalities that adopt the code are free to create amendments, and may choose to adopt the standard. Although this test method is loosely based on research that was done using the ANSI B101.3 test method discussed above, the ANSI A137.1 test method is apparently not based on a correlation to human traction tests or any justifiable level of slip risk. It is a pass/fail test method using the BOT-3000E where any level indoor flooring expected to get wet in use must have a DCOF of 0.42 or greater when wet to be acceptable for use. The test does not apply to barefoot areas, inclined floors, or outdoor flooring. The 0.42 number is considered a minimum, and many other factors must be considered, according to the test method.
ANSI A326.3 is nearly identical to A137.1 in its test method and has basically superseded ANSI A137.1, adding more detail to the test method and adding several disclaimers such as this test method "can provide a useful comparison of surfaces, but does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.” This means that A326.3 (and therefore A137.1) should not be used to assess real-world slip risk, but is rather a useful test method to assess changes in slip resistance due to wear, maintenance practices, and other factors.
The BOT-3000E (as well as the pendulum slip resistance tester) has passed the ASTM F2508-13 standard published in 2013 called the "Standard Practice for Validation, Calibration, and Certification of Walkway Tribometers Using Reference Surfaces". Although this test is necessary for a tribometer to pass, it is not sufficient in validating a tribometer as indicative of the human traction potential of a walking surface. Although this ASTM test method was created with good intentions, the test is often conducted and interpreted by people who have a vested interest in their tribometer having passed the test. In other words, a tribometer having passed this test should not be solely relied upon in deciding whether a certain tribometer is trustworthy or not. A reliable tribometer will also be able to submit a reasonable precision statement as required by every test standard-publishing agency, such as the ASTM, ANSI, Standards Australia, and British Standards. A tribometer with internationally accepted approval will have been found to correlate well with Variable-Angle ramp tests of human traction (see below), have an official and/or well-researched test method, and be able to provide a reasonable precision statement. To date, the pendulum slip resistance tester and the BOT-3000E fit this criteria. The English XL, Brungraber Mark II, and Mark IIIB (discussed more below) do not as they cannot provide reasonable precision statements for those devices, which are commonly used by full-time expert witnesses, mainly in the USA.
Variable-angle ramp.
The Variable-Angle Ramp is a German-developed method for obtaining pedestrian slip resistance values. Flooring samples are mounted horizontally on the ramp tester and an operator clad in safety boots or bare feet performs a standardized walk up and down the sample while wearing a harness to stop the operator from being injured. The sample is slowly inclined until the operator slips on the surface. The angle at which the subject slips is then recorded. Two operators repeat this test three times and then an average is calculated. The repeatability of this test method was extensively documented. Tests can be performed dry, wet with soapy water and bare feet, wet with oil, etc.
Over 150 safety criteria have been adopted in Germany and Australia for specific situations — swimming pool decks, commercial kitchens, restrooms, etc. based on the variable-angle ramp, but the ramp itself is not readily portable, so this instrument is only for lab testing and is therefore quite limited in its utility. In other words, you can't test your specific floor tiles using this method without ripping part of your floor up and putting it into the ramp tester. However, since it is measuring real human ambulation, it is considered by many to be the most realistic test method in existence, and the results of pendulum and drag-sled meter tests are sometimes compared with results from variable-angle ramp tests to see if the results have a strong correlation. A good correlation with ramp test results can help a slip resistance test device become more widely used and accepted.
SlipAlert slip tester.
SlipAlert is a matchbox car-like tribometer that is designed to mimic the readings of the pendulum. Manufactured in the United Kingdom, it is used for field testing, but is of limited use in a laboratory setting because it requires a long path length of flooring to conduct tests. As it is a proprietary device, it does not have an official American standard test method, but it does have an official test standard in the United Kingdom in BS 8204-6:2008.
The SlipAlert "car" has a rubber slider on its bottom, which slides across the flooring after running down a fixed ramp. If the SlipAlert stops short, then the flooring is slip resistant, but if it slides a long distance then the floor is considered slippery. There is a digital readout on the device that records the maximum distance the SlipAlert has traveled across the flooring, and a safety criterion graph which interprets the results. Tests can be done dry and wet, and extensive research by U.K. and Australian government agencies have resulted in several endorsements of this test device for in situ testing.
Tortus digital tribometer.
The Tortus digital tribometer slip resistance test method is based on a proprietary or patented device, which makes it ineligible to become an ASTM standard. It is produced in the U.K., and is in a category of slip resistance tester devices known as "drag-sled meters", which means that it travels across flooring under its own power at a constant speed with a piece of standardized rubber dragging on the flooring. The amount of friction created by this piece of rubber as it is dragged across the flooring (dry or wet) is recorded and calculated by the machine as it travels a predetermined path length. An average number of dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF) is calculated by the machine after its run across the flooring has been completed. This is recorded as the "DCOF", or the amount of friction necessary to drag (dynamic meaning "in motion") the standardized rubber across the flooring. High numbers (e.g. above 0.50) indicate that it is difficult for the machine to drag the rubber across the flooring because it is anti-slip, and low numbers (e.g. below 0.50) means that the rubber easily slides across the flooring and is therefore slippery.
The Tortus is now the primary instrument for assessing dry slip resistance in the latest Australian slip test standard - AS4586-2013. It has also been endorsed as a secondary standard by Ceramic Tile Institute of America (CTIOA) since 2001, with the pendulum being the primary standard. The advantage of the Tortus, compared to the pendulum, is that it can perform many slip tests in a short period of time, dry and wet, using both hard and soft rubbers. It is also difficult for the operator to influence the results of the test (unlike some tribometers) since an electronic button is pushed and then the test is run without any further help from the operator. This makes it a credible forensic science device. CTIOA has endorsed a minimum dynamic coefficient of friction for level floors of 0.50 using the Tortus slip resistance test method.
Withdrawn standards and unreliable test methods.
ASTM C1028-07 - static coefficient of friction testing.
Safety criteria based solely on static coefficient of friction (SCOF), often used in the U.S. in the past for assessing safety, are too often misleading where flooring gets wet or otherwise lubricated in use. That is why the ASTM C1028 test method was officially withdrawn with no replacement in 2014. In the US, architects and designers generally look for a wet static coefficient of friction of 0.60 or higher by ASTM method C 1028 to assess potential safety for wet areas of level floors. This can give deceptive results, applying “safe” ratings to some flooring samples that are in fact very slippery when wet. The method is now acknowledged by ASTM, Ceramic Tile Institute of America, and Tile Council of North America to be inadequate for assessing slip safety.
See "external links" at the bottom of this page for more information on the inadequacies of the C1028 test. Suffering from stiction and the fact that the measurement taken is a measure of how slippery a surface is when someone is standing still on it (which is irrelevant to the measuring of the slip resistance to a person walking over the surface - where almost every accident occurs), methods such as C1028-07, the James Machine, and the ASM 725/825A have very limited use in assessing wet floor friction and should not be solely relied upon. These static test methods can be used to monitor changes in slip potential over time, but are not reliable tests for determining slip resistance of flooring. For example, static tests can be conducted before and after a fresh coat of wax is applied to a floor to make sure the SCOF has not changed dramatically with the new wax, or readings can be taken at various times during a business day to make sure that dirt and dust is not making the flooring slip situation worse throughout the day. Monitoring changes in dry SCOF can be a useful practice. However, SCOF tests should never be used to determine if a floor is slippery when wet. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recommended an SCOF of 0.50 for workplace environments, but often flooring having a rating of 0.60 or greater (supposedly even more slip resistant than 0.50 flooring) is proven by reliable test devices (and multiple slip and fall accident victims) to be very, very slippery when wet using this outdated test method. This ASTM test standard has expired, and there are no plans to renew it as it has caused more confusion than anything else.
English XL (VIT), Brungraber Mark I, Brungraber Mark II (PIAST), and Brungraber Mark IIIB.
The former ASTM F1677 was the test method for the Brungraber Mark II (also known as Portable Inclinable Articulated Strut Tribometer or PIAST) device, and the former ASTM F1679 test method was written for the English XL Variable Incidence Tribometer (VIT). Shortly after being published in 2004, ASTM withdrew these standards in 2006, with no replacement. Regarding ASTM F1679, ASTM provides the following 'withdrawn rationale': "Formerly under the jurisdiction of Committee F13 on Pedestrian/Walkway Safety and Footwear, this test method was withdrawn as an active ASTM standard by action of the Committee of Standards (COS) on September 30, 2006 for failure to include an approved precision statement (violating Section A21 of the Form and Style for ASTM Standards), and for including reference to proprietary apparatus where alternatives exist (violating Section 15 of the Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees)." ASTM offers the following, similar 'withdrawn rationale' for F1677: "Formerly under the jurisdiction of Committee F13 on Pedestrian/Walkway Safety and Footwear, this test method was withdrawn as an active ASTM standard by action of the Committee of Standards (COS) on September 30, 2006 for failure to include an approved precision statement (violating Section A21 of the Form and Style for ASTM Standards), and for including reference to proprietary apparatus where alternatives exist (violating Section 15 of the Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees)." Using these two instruments, different test labs got very different answers on identical tiles in interlaboratory studies, meaning these test methods (or devices) were unreliable and unable to provide "reasonable precision statements". The Mark IIIB is similar to the Mark II and suffers from the same poor precision issues as its predecessor.
Users of the English XL and the Brungraber Mark IIIB have, in recent years, begun citing that their instruments are now able to pass ASTM F2508, claiming this makes their instrument "valid" for investigating slips and falls. But as noted earlier, an instrument must be able to pass ASTM F2508, but must also be able to provide a "reasonable precision statement" required from all standards publishing agencies. Instruments that are able to accomplish both of these requirements will have international acceptance and will have published standards in one or more countries. The pendulum and the BOT-3000E are two instruments that have active standards and have achieved international acceptance as valid slip testing devices.
ASTM F462 was withdrawn by the ASTM in 2016, and was for use with the Brungraber Mark I for testing bathtubs. It was withdrawn.


Evans balance

An Evans balance, also known as a Johnson-Matthey balance (after the most prolific producer of the Evans balance) is a device for measuring magnetic susceptibility. Magnetic susceptibility is related to the force experienced by a substance in a magnetic field. Various practical devices are available for the measurement of susceptibility, which differ in the shape of the magnetic field and the way the force is measured.
In the Gouy balance there is a homogeneous field in the central region between two (flat) poles of a permanent magnet, or an electromagnet. The sample, in the form of a powder in a cylindrical tube, is suspended in such a way the one end lies in the centre of the field and the other is effectively outside the magnetic field. The force is measured by an analytical balance
The Evans balance employs a similar sample configuration, but measures the force on the magnet.
Mechanism.
Two pairs of magnets are placed back to back on a suspension strip making a balanced system with a magnetic field at each end. When a sample, which is fixed in a glass tube holder, is introduced into the field of one magnet, that magnet experiences a force which deflects the beam. The deflection is detected by an optical transducer. A magnetic field is generated at the second magnet which, by negative feedback, restores the beam to its original position. The magnetic field required to do that is generated by passing a current through a coil of wire. One end of that wire is between the poles of the second magnet. The current required to do this is proportional to the force exerted on the first magnet. There is a second coil of wire that creates an electrical zero and a copper sheet that can critically dampen the system.
The original Evans balance was described by Dennis F. Evans in 1973 based on a torsional balance developed in 1937 by Alexander Rankine. Evans used Ticonal bars with cadmium plated mild steel yokes as the magnets, a Johnson-Matthey gold alloy (hence the other name of the balance) for the suspension strip, all glued together with epoxy resin onto a phosphor brown spacer. The tubes were made from NMR tubes and the current came from CdS photocells. This original was modified with help from the Johnson-Matthey company Two pairs of magnets were glued between the arms of an H-frame. The sample was placed into the gap between one pair of magnets and a small coil in the gap between the second pair of magnets. This entire construction pivoted horizontally around a torsion strip. When a sample tube was placed between the first pair of magnets, the torsional force was restored by the current passed through the coil between the second pair of magnets, giving a reading on a display instead of a Helipot (as was used in the original).
Advantages vs alternative magnetic balances.
The main advantage of this system is that it is cheap to construct as it does not require a precision weighting device. It is also more convenient to use than the Guoy and Faraday balances. These systems were very sensitive and accurate but were very time-consuming. One reason that they were time-consuming is because the sample had to be suspended in between the two poles of a very powerful magnet. The tube had to be suspended in the same place every time in order for the apparatus constant to be accurate. In the case of the Guoy balance, static charge on the glass tube often caused the tube to stick to magnets. With the Evans balance, a reading could be taken in a matter of seconds with only small sacrifices in sensitivity and accuracy. A Johnson-Matthey balance has a range from 0.001 x 10−7 to 1.99 x 10−7 c.g.s. volume susceptibility units. Even the original Evans balance had an accuracy within 1% of literature values for diamagnetic solutions and within 2% of literature values of paramagnetic solids.
The system allows for measurements of solids, liquids, and gases forms of a wide range of paramagnetic and diamagnetic materials. For each measurement, only around 250 mg of sample is required (50 mg can be used for a thin-bore sample tube).
Calibration.
The Evans balance measures susceptibility indirectly by referring to a calibration standard of known susceptibility. The most convenient compound for this purpose is mercury cobalt thiocyanate, HgCo(NCS)4, which has a susceptibility of 16.44×10−6 (±0.5%) CGS at 20 °C. Another common calibration standard is [Ni(en)]SO which has a susceptibility of 1.104 x 10−5 erg G−2 cm−3. Three readings of the meter are needed, of an empty tube, "R"0 of the tube filled with calibrant and of the tube filled with the sample, "R"s. Some balances have an auto-tare feature that eliminates the need for the "R"0 measurement. Accuracy depends somewhat on homogenous packing of the sample. The first two provide a calibration constant, "C". The mass susceptibility in grams is calculated as
where "L" is the length of the sample, "C" is the calibration constant (usually 1 if it has been calibrated), and "m" is its mass in grams. The reading for the empty tube is needed because the tube glass is diamagnetic. There is a "V" term multiplied by an "A" term in the most general form of the equation. These two terms ("V"∗"A") are collectively added to the numerator in the above equation. The "V" term is the volume susceptibility of air (0.029 x 10−6 erg G−2 cm−3) and "A" is the cross-sectional area of the sample. These two terms can be ignored for solid samples, yielding the original equation written above.
To calculate the volume magnetic susceptibility (χ) instead of the weigh susceptibility (χg), such as a when liquid samples, the equation would have the extra "V" term added to the numerator and instead of being divided by "m", the equation would be divided by "d" for the density of the solution.