Arago spot

In optics, the Arago spot, Poisson spot, or Fresnel spot is a bright point that appears at the center of a circular object's shadow due to Fresnel diffraction. This spot played an important role in the discovery of the wave nature of light and is a common way to demonstrate that light behaves as a wave (for example, in undergraduate physics laboratory exercises).
The basic experimental setup requires a point source, such as an illuminated pinhole or a diverging laser beam. The dimensions of the setup must comply with the requirements for Fresnel diffraction. Namely, the Fresnel number must satisfy
where
Finally, the edge of the circular object must be sufficiently smooth.
These conditions together explain why the bright spot is not encountered in everyday life. However, with the laser sources available today, it is undemanding to perform an Arago-spot experiment.
In astronomy, the Arago spot can also be observed in the strongly defocussed image of a star in a Newtonian telescope. There, the star provides an almost ideal point source at infinity, and the secondary mirror of the telescope constitutes the circular obstacle.
When light shines on the circular obstacle, Huygens' principle says that every point in the plane of the obstacle acts as a new point source of light. The light coming from points on the circumference of the obstacle and going to the center of the shadow travels exactly the same distance, so all the light passing close by the object arrives at the screen in phase and constructively interferes. This results in a bright spot at the shadow's center, where geometrical optics and particle theories of light predict that there should be no light at all.
History.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the idea that light does not simply propagate along straight lines gained traction. Thomas Young published his double-slit experiment in 1807. The original Arago spot experiment was carried out a decade later and was the deciding experiment on the question of whether light is a particle or a wave. It is thus an example of an "experimentum crucis".
At that time, many favored Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory of light, among them the theoretician Siméon Denis Poisson. In 1818 the French Academy of Sciences launched a competition to explain the properties of light, where Poisson was one of the members of the judging committee. The civil engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel entered this competition by submitting a new wave theory of light.
Poisson studied Fresnel's theory in detail and, being a supporter of the particle theory of light, looked for a way to prove it wrong. Poisson thought that he had found a flaw when he argued that a consequence of Fresnel's theory was that there would exist an on-axis bright spot in the shadow of a circular obstacle, where there should be complete darkness according to the particle theory of light. Since the Arago spot is not easily observed in everyday situations, Poisson interpreted it as an absurd result and that it should disprove Fresnel's theory.
However, the head of the committee, Dominique-François-Jean Arago (who incidentally later became Prime Minister of France), decided to perform the experiment in more detail. He molded a 2 mm metallic disk to a glass plate with wax. He succeeded in observing the predicted spot, which convinced most scientists of the wave nature of light and gave Fresnel the win.
Arago later noted that the phenomenon (later known as "Poisson's spot" or the "spot of Arago") had already been observed by Delisle and Maraldi a century earlier.
It only turned out much later (in one of Albert Einstein's "Annus Mirabilis" papers) that light can be equally described as a particle (wave–particle duality of light).
Theory.
At the heart of Fresnel's wave theory is the Huygens–Fresnel principle, which states that every unobstructed point of a wavefront becomes the source of a secondary spherical wavelet and that the amplitude of the optical field "E" at a point on the screen is given by the superposition of all those secondary wavelets taking into account their relative phases. This means that the field at a point P1 on the screen is given by a surface integral:
where the inclination factor formula_3 which ensures that the secondary wavelets do not propagate backwards is given by
and
The first term outside of the integral represents the oscillations from the source wave at a distance "r"0. Similarly, the term inside the integral represents the oscillations from the secondary wavelets at distances "r"1.
In order to derive the intensity behind the circular obstacle using this integral one assumes that the experimental parameters fulfill the requirements of the near-field diffraction regime (the size of the circular obstacle is large compared to the wavelength and small compared to the distances "g" = P0C and "b" = CP1). Going to polar coordinates then yields the integral for a circular object of radius "a" (see for example Born and Wolf):
This integral can be solved numerically (see below). If "g" is large and "b" is small so that the angle formula_7 is not negligible one can write the integral for the on-axis case (P1 is at the center of the shadow) as (see ):
The source intensity, which is the square of the field amplitude, is formula_9 and the intensity at the screen formula_10. The on-axis intensity as a function of the distance "b" is hence given by:
This shows that the on-axis intensity at the center of the shadow tends to the source intensity, as if the circular object was not present at all. Furthermore, this means that the Arago spot is present even just a few obstacle diameters behind the disc.
Calculation of diffraction images.
To calculate the full diffraction image that is visible on the screen one has to consider the surface integral of the previous section. One cannot exploit circular symmetry anymore, since the line between the source and an arbitrary point on the screen does not pass through the center of the circular object. With the aperture function formula_12 which is 1 for transparent parts of the object plane and 0 otherwise (i.e. It is 0 if the direct line between source and the point on the screen passes through the blocking circular object.) the integral that needs to be solved is given by:
Numerical calculation of the integral using the trapezoidal rule or Simpson's rule is not efficient and becomes numerically unstable especially for configurations with large Fresnel number. However, it is possible to solve the radial part of the integral so that only the integration over the azimuth angle remains to be done numerically. For a particular angle one must solve the line integral for the ray with origin at the intersection point of the line P0P1 with the circular object plane. The contribution for a particular ray with azimuth angle formula_14 and passing a transparent part of the object plane from formula_15 to formula_16 is:
So for each angle one has to compute the intersection point("s") of the ray with the circular object and then sum the contributions formula_18 for a certain number of angles between 0 and formula_19. Results of such a calculation are shown in the following images.
The images show simulated Arago spots in the shadow of a disc of varying diameter (4 mm, 2 mm, 1 mm – left to right) at a distance of 1 m from the disc. The point source has a wavelength of 633 nm (e.g. He-Ne Laser) and is located 1 m from the disc. The image width corresponds to 16 mm.
Experimental aspects.
Intensity and size.
For an ideal point source, the intensity of the Arago spot equals that of the undisturbed wave front. Only the width of the Arago spot intensity peak depends on the distances between source, circular object and screen, as well as the source's wavelength and the diameter of the circular object. This means that one can compensate for a reduction in the source's wavelength by increasing the distance l between circular object and screen or reducing the circular object's diameter.
The lateral intensity distribution on the screen has in fact the shape of a squared zeroth Bessel function of the first kind when close to the optical axis and using a plane wave source (point source at infinity):
where
The following images show the radial intensity distribution of the simulated Arago spot images above:
The red lines in these three graphs correspond to the simulated images above, and the green lines were computed by applying the corresponding parameters to the squared Bessel function given above.
Finite source size and spatial coherence.
The main reason why the Arago spot is hard to observe in circular shadows from conventional light sources is that such light sources are bad approximations of point sources. If the wave source has a finite size "S" then the Arago spot will have an extent that is given by "Sb"/"g", as if the circular object acted like a lens. At the same time the intensity of the Arago spot is reduced with respect to the intensity of the undisturbed wave front. Defining the relative intensity formula_21as the intensity divided by the intensity of the undisturbed wavefront, the relative intensity for an extended circular source of diameter w can be expressed exactly using the following equation:
where formula_23and formula_24are the Bessel functions of the first kind. R is the radius of the disc casting the shadow, formula_25the wavelength and "g" the distance between source and disc. For large sources the following asymptotic approximation applies:
Deviation from circularity.
If the cross-section of the circular object deviates slightly from its circular shape (but it still has a sharp edge on a smaller scale) the shape of the point-source Arago spot changes. In particular, if the object has an ellipsoidal cross-section the Arago spot has the shape of an evolute. Note that this is only the case if the source is close to an ideal point source. From an extended source the Arago spot is only affected marginally, since one can interpret the Arago spot as a point-spread function. Therefore, the image of the extended source only becomes washed out due to the convolution with the point-spread function, but it does not decrease in over all intensity.
The circular object's surface roughness.
The Arago spot is very sensitive to small-scale deviations from the ideal circular cross-section. This means that a small amount of surface roughness of the circular object can completely cancel out the bright spot. This is shown in the following three diagrams which are simulations of the Arago spot from a 4 mm diameter disc ("g" = "b" = 1 m):
The simulation includes a regular sinusoidal corrugation of the circular shape of amplitude 10 μm, 50 μm and 100 μm, respectively. Note, that the 100 μm edge corrugation almost completely removes the central bright spot.
This effect can be best understood using the Fresnel zone concept. The field transmitted by a radial segment that stems from a point on the obstacle edge provides a contribution whose phase is tight to the position of the edge point relative to Fresnel zones. If the variance in the radius of the obstacle are much smaller than the width of Fresnel zone near the edge, the contributions form radial segments are approximately in phase and interfere constructively. However, if random edge corrugation have amplitude comparable to or greater than the width of that adjacent Fresnel zone, the contributions from radial segments are no longer in phase and cancel each other reducing the Arago spot intensity.
The adjacent Fresnel zone is approximately given by:
The edge corrugation should not be much more than 10% of this width to see a close to ideal Arago spot. In the above simulations with the 4 mm diameter disc the adjacent Fresnel zone has a width of about 77 μm.
Arago spot with matter waves.
In 2009, the Arago spot experiment was demonstrated with a supersonic expansion beam of deuterium molecules (an example of neutral matter waves). Material particles behaving like waves is known from quantum mechanics. The wave-nature of particles actually dates back to de Broglie's hypothesis as well as Davisson and Germer's experiments. An Arago spot of electrons, which also constitute matter waves, can be observed in transmission electron microscopes when examining circular structures of a certain size.
The observation of an Arago spot with large molecules, thus proving their wave-nature, is a topic of current research.
Other applications.
Beside the demonstration of wave-behavior, the Arago spot also has a few other applications. One of the ideas is to use the Arago spot as a straight line reference in alignment systems. Another is to probe aberrations in laser beams by using the spot's sensitivity to beam aberrations. Finally, the aragoscope has been proposed as a method for dramatically improving the diffraction-limited resolution of space-based telescopes.


334 Chicago

Chicago (minor planet designation: 334 Chicago) is a very large main-belt asteroid. It is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of carbonaceous material.
It was discovered by Max Wolf on August 23, 1892, in Heidelberg.


Daylight saving time in Oceania

Parts of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Samoa are areas of Oceania that currently observe daylight saving time (DST).
By country and region.
Australia.
Currently, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory, Jervis Bay Territory and South Australia apply DST each year, from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April.
The Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia and the external territories do not observe DST.
Daylight saving was first used in Australia during World War I, and was applied in all states. It was used again during the Second World War. A drought in Tasmania in 1967 led to the reintroduction during the summer, and this was repeated every summer since. In 1971, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory followed Tasmania in observing daylight saving, Western Australia and the Northern Territory did not. Queensland abandoned daylight saving time in 1972. Originally Tasmania alone commenced daylight saving on the first Sunday in October, while the other states began on the last Sunday in October and finished on the last Sunday in March, until 2008 excepting in 2000 when all the states observing DST moved forward the commencement date to Sunday, 27 August 2000 because of the Sydney Olympic Games which commenced in mid-September. From 2008/09 daylight saving has been extended another four weeks in NSW, Victoria, SA and the ACT, in addition to Tasmania, from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April.
Queensland again trialled daylight saving, for three years between 1989 and 1992, with a referendum on daylight saving held on 22 February 1992, which was defeated with a 54.5% ‘no’ vote - with regional and rural areas strongly opposed, while those in the metropolitan South East Queensland were in favour.
In December 2008, the Daylight Saving for South East Queensland (DS4SEQ) political party was officially registered, advocating the implementation of a dual-time zone arrangement for Daylight Saving in South East Queensland while the rest of the state maintains standard time. The party contested the March 2009 Queensland State election with 32 candidates and received around one percent of the state-wide primary vote, equating to around 2.5% across the 32 electorates contested.
On 14 April 2010, and after being approached by the Daylight Saving for South East Queensland (DS4SEQ) political party, Queensland Independent member Peter Wellington, introduced the Daylight Saving for South East Queensland Referendum Bill 2010 into Queensland Parliament, calling for a referendum to be held at the next State election on the introduction of daylight saving into South East Queensland under a dual-time zone arrangement. The Bill was defeated in Queensland Parliament on 15 June 2011.
In Western Australia, four referendums in 1975, 1984, 1992 and 2009 have rejected DST.
In 2006, the Parliament of Western Australia approved a three-year daylight saving trial to be followed by a referendum to decide whether DST should be put in place permanently. However, public opposition mounted during the first year of the trial, and the WA Nationals announced a public campaign to bring the referendum forward to 2007. The trial continued until the referendum, held on 16 May 2009. The result was another rejection of DST, by a larger margin compared to the three previous referendums. Although as previously the suburbs of the state capital, Perth, supported the proposal, it was by a much narrower margin than before with significant swings against it in several areas, most notably in the East Metropolitan region. As a result, the Premier of Western Australia has said that the DST issue should not be considered for at least another 20 years.
The Northern Territory experimented with daylight saving in the early part of the 20th century. It was last used in 1944.
Fiji.
Despite its proximity to the equator and therefore a relatively small variation of daylight length, Fiji implemented daylight saving time in 1998-99 but it ended after that. Fiji restarted DST in 2009 starting on November 29 and ending on April 26, 2010. The decision was based on a report by the Attorney-General, Mr Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. "Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said that from the information available, the implementation of daylight saving in 1998 and 1999 received very encouraging response from the people and the business community. Apart from availability of more daylight time for sport, leisure and shopping, the working people are able to spend quality daylight time in the afternoons and evenings with their family and loved ones, including engaging in healthy activities such as gardening or going for a walk. In 1999, the Ministry of Labour reported that there was an overall increase in economic activity and productive work as a result of daylight saving." For the 2010-2011 summer, DST started on fourth Sunday in October and ended on last Sunday in March. Fiji changed the ending of DST to the last Sunday in January in 2011.
Hawaii.
Although Hawaii is further away from equator than Fiji, and therefore there is a slightly greater variation in the daylight length, Hawaii does not observe DST. Most of the inhabited islands are located close to the west end of the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone, and Oahu, Kauai and Niihau are located more than 7 degrees west of the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone's meridian and should, theoretically, be located in the next time zone to the west. Therefore advancing the clock in Hawaii would make sunrise times close to 7:00 a.m. even in June.
Hawaii did experiment with DST for three weeks between April 30, 1933 and May 21, 1933; there are no known official records as to why it was implemented or discontinued. Hawaii has never observed daylight saving time under the Uniform Time Act, having opted out of the Act's provisions in 1967.
New Zealand.
From 30 April 2007, DST begins at 02:00 NZST on the last Sunday in September each year, and ends at 03:00 NZDT (or 02:00 NZST as defined in the Time Act 1974) on the first Sunday in April.
New Zealand time, including DST, is used by several Antarctic bases that are supplied from New Zealand. This results in the oddity that the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station sets its clocks an hour further ahead during the southern summer, when the sun is constantly above the horizon, than in the southern winter, when the sun is constantly below the horizon. The extreme geographic position of the base means that no possible adjustment of the daily activity cycle can have any effect on the amount of sunlight received during those activities. However, the arrangement presumably makes real time communications with New Zealand more practical, particularly in dealing with offices.
The New Zealand dependencies of Tokelau, Cook Islands and Niue do not maintain DST. The latter two are on the other side of the International Date Line and differ between 22 and 24 hours from New Zealand proper.
Samoa.
Samoa started with DST in 2010, starting on the last Sunday in September and ending on first Sunday in April.
U.S. territories.
All U.S. insular territories with civilian government in Oceania, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands lie in the tropics and do not observe DST.


727 Nipponia

727 Nipponia is a minor planet orbiting the Sun. It is a member of the Maria family of asteroids.
"Nipponia" was originally discovered by Shin Hirayama in Tokyo on March 6, 1900. However, he was not able to determine its orbit. After it was rediscovered by Adam Massinger on February 11, 1912, Massinger gave the honor of naming it to Hirayama, who chose to name it from a latinization of "Nippon" (Japan in Japanese). Massinger, however, remains the officially credited discoverer of "Nipponia".


4486 Mithra

4486 Mithra ("prov. designation:" ), is an eccentric asteroid and suspected contact-binary, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid, approximately 2 kilometers in diameter. It belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids and is a relatively slow rotator.
The asteroid was discovered on 22 September 1987, by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst and Bulgarian astronomer Vladimir Shkodrov at Rozhen Observatory, in the Smolyan Province of Bulgaria. It was named after the Indo-Iranian divinity Mithra.
Orbit and classification.
"Mithra" orbits the Sun at a distance of 0.7–3.7 AU once every 3 years and 3 months (1,192 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.66 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic. In 1974, "Mithra" was first identified as at Crimea–Nauchnij. The body's observation arc begins 8 months prior to its official discovery observation, with a precovery taken at the Japanese Kiso Observatory in January 1987.
Close approaches.
As a potentially hazardous asteroid, it has a low minimum orbit intersection distance with Earth of or 18 lunar distances. On 14 August 2000, it passed from Earth.
Physical characteristics.
Rotation period and shape.
Radar imaging using a delay-Doppler technique at the Arecibo and Goldstone observatories rendered a rotation period of hours. Based on the radar analysis, "Mithra" is also a strong candidate for a contact binary, which is composed of two distinct lobes in mutual contact, held together by their weak gravitational attraction. They typically show a , dumbbell-like shape "(also see 4769 Castalia)". A large number of near-Earth objects are believed to be contact-binaries.
Diameter and albedo.
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, "Mithra" measures 1.85 kilometers in diameter and its surface has a high albedo of 0.297, while the "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 2.25 kilometer with an absolute magnitude of 15.6.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Mithra "(also see Mitra)", deity in the proto-Indo-Iranian religion. The mystery religion of Mithraism was practiced in the Roman Empire between the 1st and 4th century. Considered to be a rival of early Christianity, both religions shared similar characteristics such as elevation and the ritual of baptism. In the Hellenistic world, Mithra was conflated with Apollo. The asteroid 1862 Apollo is the namesake of this asteroid's orbital group. The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 5 September 1990 ().


Kibble balance

A Kibble balance is an electromechanical measuring instrument that measures the weight of a test object very precisely by the electric current and voltage needed to produce a compensating force. It is a metrological instrument that can realize the definition of the kilogram unit of mass based on fundamental constants.
It was originally called the watt balance because the weight of the test mass is proportional to the product of current and voltage, which is measured in watts. In June 2016, two months after the death of its inventor, Bryan Kibble, metrologists of the Consultative Committee for Units of the International Committee for Weights and Measures agreed to rename the device in his honor.
Prior to 2019, the definition of the kilogram was based on a physical object known as the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK).
After considering alternatives, in 2013 the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) agreed on accuracy criteria for replacing this definition with one based on the use of a Kibble balance. After these criteria had been achieved, the CGPM voted unanimously on November 16, 2018 to change the definition of the kilogram and several other units, effective May 20, 2019, to coincide with World Metrology Day.
Design.
The Kibble balance is a more accurate version of the ampere balance, an early current measuring instrument in which the force between two current-carrying coils of wire is measured and then used to calculate the magnitude of the current. The Kibble balance operates in the opposite sense; the current in the coils is measured using the definition of the Planck constant to "measure mass without recourse to the IPK or any physical object." The balance determines the weight of the object; then the mass is calculated by accurately measuring the local Earth's gravity (the net acceleration combining gravitational and centrifugal effects) with a gravimeter. Thus the mass of the object is defined in terms of a current and a voltage—an "electronic kilogram."
Origin.
The principle that is used in the Kibble balance was proposed by Bryan Kibble of the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in 1975 for measurement of the gyromagnetic ratio.
The main weakness of the ampere balance method is that the result depends on the accuracy with which the dimensions of the coils are measured. The Kibble balance uses an extra calibration step to cancel the effect of the geometry of the coils, removing the main source of uncertainty. This extra step involves moving the force coil through a known magnetic flux at a known speed. This step was first performed in 1990.
The Kibble balance originating from the National Physical Laboratory was transferred to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in 2009, where scientists from the two labs continued to refine the instrument.
In 2014, NRC researchers published the most accurate measurement of the Planck constant at that time, with a relative uncertainty of 1.8. A final paper by NRC researchers was published in May 2017, presenting a measurement of Planck's constant with an uncertainty of only 9.1 parts per billion, the measurement with the least uncertainty to that date. Other Kibble balance experiments are conducted in the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Swiss Federal Office of Metrology (METAS) in Berne, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) near Paris and Laboratoire national de métrologie et d’essais (LNE) in Trappes, France.
Principle.
A conducting wire of length "L" that carries an electric current "I" perpendicular to a magnetic field of strength "B" experiences a Lorentz force equal to the product of these variables. In the Kibble balance, the current is varied so that this force counteracts the weight "w" of a mass "m" to be measured. This principle is derived from the ampere balance. "w" is given by the mass "m" multiplied by the local gravitational acceleration "g". Thus,
The Kibble balance avoids the problems of measuring "B" and "L" in a second calibration step. The same wire (in practice, a coil) is moved through the same magnetic field at a known speed "v". By Faraday's law of induction, a potential difference "U" is generated across the ends of the wire, which equals "BLv". Thus
The unknown product "BL" can be eliminated from the equations to give
With "U", "I", "g", and "v" accurately measured, this gives an accurate value for "m".
Both sides of the equation have the dimensions of power, measured in watts in the International System of Units; hence the original name "watt balance".
Implementation.
The Kibble balance is constructed so that the mass to be measured and the wire coil are suspended from one side of a balance scale, with a counterbalance mass on the other side. The system operates by alternating between two modes: "weighing" and "moving". The entire mechanical subsystem operates in a vacuum chamber to remove the effects of air buoyancy.
While "weighing", the system measures the "I" component and the "v" component. The system controls the current in the coil to pull the coil through a magnetic field at a constant velocity "v". Coil position and velocity measurement circuitry uses an interferometer together with a precision clock input to determine the velocity and control the current needed to maintain it. The required current is measured, using an ammeter comprising a Josephson junction voltage standard and an integrating voltmeter.
While "moving", the system measures the "U" component. The system ceases to provide current to the coil. This allows the counterbalance to pull the coil (and mass) upward through the magnetic field, which causes a voltage difference across the coil. The velocity measurement circuitry measures the speed of movement of the coil. This voltage is measured, using the same voltage standard and integrating voltmeter.
A typical Kibble balance measures U, I, and v, but does not measure the local gravitational acceleration "g", because "g" does not vary rapidly with time. Instead, "g" is measured in the same laboratory using a highly accurate and precise gravimeter. In addition, the balance depends on a highly accurate and precise frequency reference such as an atomic clock to compute voltage and amperage. Thus, the precision and accuracy of the mass measurement depends on the Kibble balance, the gravimeter, and the clock.
Like the early atomic clocks, the early Kibble balances were one-of-a-kind experimental devices and were large, expensive, and delicate. As of 2019, work is underway to produce standardized devices at prices that permit use in any metrology laboratory that requires high-precision measurement of mass.
As well as large Kibble balances, microfabricated or MEMS watt balances (now called Kibble balances) have been demonstrated since around 2003. These are fabricated on single silicon dies similar to those used in microelectronics and accelerometers, and are capable of measuring small forces in the nanonewton to micronewton range traceably to the SI-defined physical constants via electrical and optical measurements. Due to their small scale, MEMS Kibble balances typically use electrostatic rather than the inductive forces used in larger instruments. Lateral and torsional variants have also been demonstrated, with the main application (as of 2019) being in the calibration of the Atomic Force Microscope.
Measurements.
Accurate measurements of electric current and potential difference are made in conventional electrical units (rather than SI units), which are based on fixed "conventional values" of the Josephson constant and the von Klitzing constant, formula_5 and formula_6 respectively. The current Kibble balance experiments are equivalent to measuring the value of the conventional watt in SI units. From the definition of the conventional watt, this is equivalent to measuring the value of the product "K"J2"R"K in SI units instead of its fixed value in conventional electrical units:
The importance of such measurements is that they are also a direct measurement of the Planck constant "h":
The principle of the electronic kilogram relies on the value of the Planck constant, which is as of 2019 an exact value. This is similar to the metre being defined by the speed of light. With the constant defined exactly, the Kibble balance is not an instrument to measure the Planck constant, but is instead an instrument to measure mass:


Square degree

A square degree (deg2) is a non-SI unit measure of solid angle. Other denotations include "sq. deg." and (°)2. Just as degrees are used to measure parts of a circle, square degrees are used to measure parts of a sphere. Analogous to one degree being equal to  radians, a square degree is equal to ()2 steradians (sr), or about  sr or .
The whole sphere has a solid angle of which is approximately :


3542 Tanjiazhen


Concordia Laptop Orchestra


Tumult Records

Tumult Records (stylized tUMULt) is an independent record label in San Francisco run by Andee Connors (also of Aquarius Records). It has released music by Acid Mothers Temple, Avarus, Brainbombs, Circle, Eikenskaden, Guapo, Harvey Milk, Leviathan, The Margins, The Ohsees, Skullflower, and Souled American.
In 2007, plans were made for a sublabel of tUMULt named Heavy Rescue, aiming to rerelease "lost eighties metal classics." That project seems to still be unrealized.


Super PI

Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits.
Significance.
Super PI is popular in the overclocking community, both as a benchmark to test the performance of these systems and as a stress test to check that they are still functioning correctly.
Credibility concerns.
The competitive nature of achieving the best Super PI calculation times led to fraudulent Super PI results, reporting calculation times faster than normal. Attempts to counter the fraudulent results resulted in a modified version of Super PI, with a checksum to validate the results. However, other methods exist of producing inaccurate or fake time results, raising questions about the program's future as an overclocking benchmark.
Super PI utilizes x87 floating point instructions which are supported on all x86 and x86-64 processors, current versions which also support the lower precision Streaming SIMD Extensions vector instructions.
The future.
Super PI is single threaded, so its relevance as a measure of performance in the current era of multi-core processors is diminishing quickly. Therefore, wPrime has been developed to support multiple threaded calculations to be run at the same time so one can test stability on multi-core machines. Other multithreaded programs include: Hyper PI, IntelBurnTest, Prime95, Montecarlo superPI, OCCT or y-cruncher. Last but not least, while SuperPi is unable to calculate more than 32 million digits, and Alexander J. Yee & Shigeru Kondo were able to set a record of 10 Trillion 50 Digits of Pi using y-cruncher under a 2 x Intel Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz - (12 physical cores, 24 hyperthreaded) computer on October 16, 2011 Super PI is much slower than these other programs, and utilizes inferior algorithms to them.


3865 Lindbloom


4342 Freud


Hypophrygian mode

The Hypophrygian (deuterus plagalis) mode, literally meaning "below Phrygian (plagal second)", is a musical mode or diatonic scale in medieval chant theory, the fourth mode of church music. This mode is the plagal counterpart of the authentic third mode, which was called "Phrygian". In the Middle Ages and Renaissance this mode was described in two ways: the diatonic scale from B to B an octave above, divided at the mode final E (B–C–D–E + E–F–G–A–B); and as a mode with final E and ambitus from the A below to the C above. The note A above the final (the tenor of the corresponding fourth psalm tone) had an important melodic function. The melodic range of the ecclesiastical Hypophrygian mode therefore goes from the perfect fourth or fifth below the tonic to the perfect fifth or minor sixth above.
The name Hypophrygian originates in an octave species of ancient Greek music theory. According to Aristoxenus, this octave species was originally described around the year 400 BC by the Harmonicist school of Eratocles in terms of the enharmonic genus of the tetrachord: a series of rising intervals of two quarter tones followed by a ditone, together spanning a perfect fourth. The Dorian octave species begins with this tetrachord, which is followed by a whole tone and another tetrachord to complete the octave with a pattern of ¼, ¼, 2, 1, ¼, ¼, and 2 tones. This pattern is rotated downward one degree for the Hypolydian, and one more for the Hypophrygian, for an octave species of 2, 1, ¼, ¼, 2, ¼, and ¼ tones.
The name was appropriated by Ptolemy of Alexandria for one of his seven "tonoi", or transposition keys. Ptolemy's system differed from the earlier Aristoxenian model, which had thirteen transpositional levels each a semitone from its neighbours. Ptolemy substituted a diatonic sequence of seven transpositions pitched either a whole tone or a semitone apart. The entire double-octave scale system was then transposed onto each of these relative pitch levels, requiring (in modern terms) a different key signature in each case, and therefore a different sequence of whole and half steps in the fixed central octave span. The Hypophrygian transposition was the second-lowest of these, a whole tone above the Hypodorian. A whole tone higher was the Hypolydian, followed a semitone higher still by the Dorian, then after another whole tone by the Phrygian, and so on. Four centuries later, the term was taken from Ptolemy in exactly the same sense by Boethius, who described these seven names as "toni, tropi, vel modi" (tones, tropes or modes) in the fourth book of his "De institutione musica". In the late 9th century, in the Carolingian treatises "Alia musica" and in a commentary on it called the "Nova expositio", this set of seven terms, supplemented by an eighth name, "Hypermixolydian", was given a new sense, designating a set of diatonic octave species, described as the tonal embodiments of the eight modes of Gregorian chant.
"Missa Mi-mi" ("Missa quarti toni") by Johannes Ockeghem is a well-known example of a work written in the Hypophrygian mode.


C tuning (guitar)

C tuning is a type of guitar tuning. The strings of the guitar are tuned two whole steps lower than standard tuning. The resulting notes can be described most commonly as C-F-A♯-D♯-G-C or C-F-B♭-E♭-G-C. This is not to be confused with C tuning, which is one and one half steps lower than standard tuning.
The tuning is commonly used by metal and hard rock artists to achieve a heavier, deeper sound. Slackening regular strings on a regular guitar to a lower pitch makes bending easier. Depending on personal playing style, some guitarists find this desirable, while others switch to heavier-gauge strings to avoid unintentional bending and to play chords in tune more easily. Another option is the use of a baritone guitar, which is built slightly longer and stronger than a regular guitar to achieve the desired pitch with heavy strings at average tensions.


Wolf interval

In music theory, the wolf fifth (sometimes also called Procrustean fifth,
or imperfect fifth)
is a particularly dissonant musical interval spanning seven semitones. Strictly, the term refers to an interval produced by a specific tuning system, widely used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the quarter-comma meantone temperament. More broadly, it is also used to refer to similar intervals produced by other tuning systems, including most meantone temperaments.
When the twelve notes within the octave of a chromatic scale are tuned using the quarter-comma mean-tone systems of temperament, one of the twelve intervals spanning seven semitones (classified as a diminished sixth) turns out to be much wider than the others (classified as perfect fifths). In mean-tone systems, this interval is usually from C to A or from G to E but can be moved in either direction to favor certain groups of keys. The eleven perfect fifths sound almost perfectly consonant. Conversely, the diminished sixth is severely dissonant and seems to howl like a wolf, because of a phenomenon called beating. Since the diminished sixth is meant to be enharmonically equivalent to a perfect fifth, this anomalous interval has come to be called the wolf fifth.
Besides the above-mentioned quarter comma meantone, other tuning systems may produce severely dissonant diminished sixths. Conversely, in 12-tone equal temperament, which is currently the most commonly used tuning system, the diminished sixth is not a wolf fifth, as it has exactly the same size as a perfect fifth.
By extension, any interval which is perceived as severely dissonant and may be regarded as howling like a wolf may be called a wolf interval. For instance, in quarter comma meantone, the augmented second, augmented third, augmented fifth, diminished fourth and diminished seventh may be considered wolf intervals, as their size significantly deviates from the size of the corresponding justly tuned interval (see Size of quarter-comma meantone intervals).
Temperament and the wolf.
In 12-tone scales, the average value of the twelve fifths must equal the 700 cents of equal temperament. If eleven of them have a value of 700 − "ε" cents, as in quarter-comma meantone and most other meantone temperament tuning systems, the other fifth (more properly called a diminished sixth) will equal 700 + 11"ε" cents. The value of "ε" changes depending on the tuning system. In other tuning systems (such as Pythagorean tuning and twelfth-comma meantone), eleven fifths may have a size of 700 + "ε" cents, thus the diminished sixth is 700 − 11"ε" cents. If 11"ε" is very large, as in the quarter-comma meantone tuning system, the diminished sixth is regarded as a wolf fifth.
In terms of frequency ratios, the product of the fifths must be 128, and if "f" is the size of a fifth, 128:"f"11, or "f"11:128, will be the size of the wolf.
We likewise find varied tunings for the thirds. Major thirds must average 400 cents, and to each pair of thirds of size 400 ∓ 4"ε" cents we have a third (or diminished fourth) of 400 ± 8"ε" cents, leading to eight thirds 4"ε" cents narrower or wider, and four diminished fourths 8"ε" cents wider or narrower than average. Three of these diminished fourths form major triads with perfect fifths, but one of them forms a major triad with the diminished sixth. If the diminished sixth is a wolf interval, this triad is called the wolf major triad.
Similarly, we obtain nine minor thirds of 300 ± 3"ε" cents and three minor thirds (or augmented seconds) of 300 ∓ 9"ε" cents.
Quarter comma meantone.
In quarter-comma meantone, the fifth is of size , about 3.42157 cents (or exactly one twelfth of a diesis) flatter than 700 cents, and so the wolf is about 737.637 cents, or 35.682 cents sharper than a perfect fifth of size exactly 3:2, and this is the original howling wolf fifth.
The flat minor thirds are only about 2.335 cents sharper than a subminor third of size 7:6, and the sharp major thirds, of size exactly 32:25, are about 7.712 cents flatter than the supermajor third of 9:7. Meantone tunings with slightly flatter fifths produce even closer approximations to the subminor and supermajor thirds and corresponding triads. These thirds therefore hardly deserve the appellation of wolf, and in fact historically have not been given that name.
The wolf fifth of quarter-comma meantone can be approximated by the 7-limit just interval 49:32, which has a size of 737.652 cents.
Pythagorean tuning.
In Pythagorean tuning, there are eleven justly tuned fifths sharper than 700 cents by about 1.955 cents (or exactly one twelfth of a Pythagorean comma), and hence one fifth will be flatter by twelve times that, which is 23.460 cents (one Pythagorean comma) flatter than a just fifth. A fifth this flat can also be regarded as howling like a wolf. There are also now eight sharp and four flat major thirds.
Five-limit tuning.
Five-limit tuning was designed to maximize the number of pure intervals, but even in this system several intervals are markedly impure. 5-limit tuning yields a much larger number of wolf intervals with respect to Pythagorean tuning, which can be considered a 3-limit just intonation tuning. Namely, while Pythagorean tuning determines only 2 wolf intervals (a fifth and a fourth), the 5-limit symmetric scales produce 12 of them, and the asymmetric scale 14. It is also important to note that the two fifths, three minor thirds, and three major sixths marked in orange in the tables (ratio 40/27, 32/27, and 27/16 (or G−, E♭−, and A+), even though they do not completely meet the conditions to be wolf intervals, deviate from the corresponding pure ratio by an amount (1 syntonic comma, i.e., 81/80, or about 21.5 cents) large enough to be clearly perceived as dissonant.
Five-limit tuning determines one diminished sixth of size 1024:675 (about 722 cents, i.e. 20 cents sharper than the 3:2 Pythagorean perfect fifth). Whether this interval should be considered dissonant enough to be called a wolf fifth is a controversial matter.
Five-limit tuning also creates two "impure" perfect fifths of size 40:27 (about 680 cents; less "pure" than the 3:2 Pythagorean perfect fifth). These are not diminished sixths, but relative to the Pythagorean perfect fifth they are less consonant (about 20 cents flatter) and hence, they might be considered to be wolf fifths. The corresponding inversion is an "impure" perfect fourth of size 27:20 (about 520 cents). For instance, in the C major diatonic scale, an impure perfect fifth arises between D and A, and its inversion arises between A and D.
Since the term "perfect" means, in this context, perfectly consonant, the impure perfect fourth and perfect fifth are sometimes simply called "imperfect" fourth and fifth. However, the widely adopted standard naming convention for musical intervals classifies them as "perfect" intervals, together with the octave and unison. This is also true for any perfect fourth or perfect fifth which slightly deviates from the perfectly consonant 4:3 or 3:2 ratios (for instance, those tuned using 12-tone equal or quarter-comma meantone temperament). Conversely, the expressions "imperfect fourth" and "imperfect fifth" do not conflict with the standard naming convention when they refer to a dissonant augmented third or diminished sixth (e.g. the wolf fourth and fifth in Pythagorean tuning).
"Taming the wolf".
Wolf intervals are a consequence of mapping a two-dimensional temperament to a one-dimensional keyboard. The only solution is to make the number of dimensions match. That is, either:
Keep the piano keyboard.
When the perfect fifth is tempered to be exactly 700 cents wide (that is, tempered by approximately of a syntonic comma, or exactly of a Pythagorean comma) then the tuning is identical to the familiar 12-tone equal temperament.
Because of the compromises (and wolf intervals) forced on meantone tunings by the one-dimensional piano-style keyboard, well temperaments and eventually equal temperament became more popular.
A fifth of the size Mozart favored, at or near the 55-equal fifth of 698.182 cents, will have a wolf of 720 cents, 18.045 cents sharper than a justly tuned fifth. This howls far less acutely, but still very noticeably.
The wolf can be tamed by adopting equal temperament or a well temperament. The very intrepid may simply want to treat it as a xenharmonic music interval; depending on the size of the meantone fifth it can be made to be exactly 20:13 or 17:11, or less commonly to 32:21 or 49:32.
With a more extreme meantone temperament, like 19 equal temperament, the wolf is large enough that it is closer in size to a sixth than a fifth, and sounds like a different interval altogether rather than a mistuned fifth.
Keep the two-dimensional tuning system.
To use a two-dimensional temperament without wolf intervals, one needs a two-dimensional keyboard that is "isomorphic" with that temperament. A keyboard and temperament are isomorphic if they are generated by the same intervals. For example, the Wicki keyboard shown in Figure 1 is generated by the same musical intervals as the syntonic temperament — that is, by the octave and tempered perfect fifth — so they are isomorphic.
On an isomorphic keyboard, any given musical interval has the same shape wherever it appears — in any octave, key, and tuning — except at the edges. For example, on Wicki's keyboard, from any given note, the note that is a tempered perfect fifth higher is always up-and-rightwardly adjacent to the given note. There are no wolf intervals within the note-span of this keyboard. The only problem is at the edge, on the note E. The note that is a tempered perfect fifth higher than E is B, which is not included on the keyboard shown (although it could be included in a larger keyboard, placed just to the right of A, hence maintaining the keyboard's consistent note-pattern). Because there is no B button, when playing an E power chord, one must choose some other note that is close in pitch to B, such as C, to play instead of the missing B. That is, the interval from E to C would be a "wolf interval" on this keyboard. In 19-TET, the interval from E to C would be (enharmonic to) a perfect fifth.
However, such edge conditions produce wolf intervals only if the isomorphic keyboard has fewer buttons per octave than the tuning has enharmonically distinct notes. For example, the isomorphic keyboard in Figure 2 has 19 buttons per octave, so the above-cited edge condition, from E to C, is "not" a wolf interval in 12-TET, 17-TET, or 19-TET; however, it "is" a wolf interval in 26-TET, 31-TET, and 53-TET. In these latter tunings, using electronic transposition could keep the current key's notes centered on the isomorphic keyboard, in which case these wolf intervals would very rarely be encountered in tonal music, despite modulation to exotic keys.
A keyboard that is isomorphic with the syntonic temperament, such as Wicki's keyboard above, retains its isomorphism in any tuning within the tuning continuum of the syntonic temperament, even when changing tuning dynamically among such tunings. Figure 2 shows the valid tuning range of the syntonic temperament.
Listen to it.
Listen to the two fifths here:


Tom Hall (electronic musician)

Tom Hall is an Australian audio/visual artist, residing in Los Angeles.
Hall's work characterized by field recordings, synthesizer, computer software processing and improvisation, which generates a large range of possible sounds including; melodic rhythms, grainy textures, and drone.
Hall's eclectic works flourish by utilizing a variety of mediums, each that reflect on his varied background and interests. With a strong focus on elements of the 'everyday' Hall's practice involves considered explorations into place, space and time. Drawing inspiration from countless 'peripheral' spaces, Hall focuses on using multiple approaches to engage and recontextualise them to the public.
Hall focuses and uses sound as a means to translate feeling, create hybrid environments and notions of journey. Stylistically these outcomes vary from noise orientated improvisation, to structured drone and melody.
Biography.
Tom Hall is a graduate of The Australian National University with Honours where he majored in Photomedia, studying under the guidance of Dr. Martyn Jolly. During Hall's time at university he spent 1 year abroad (2004) on a scholarship studying sound and moving image at Kyoto Seika University under the guidance of Saburo Hirano and Shinsuke Ina where Hall was introduced Max/MSP.
Hall utilises custom designed software and a variety of unorthodox approaches to combining imagery and sound, producing an array outcomes that have seem him exhibit and perform globally in the past decade. During his career he has completed consecutive residencies at The Perth International Arts Festival, residencies in San Francisco, Netherlands and Japan. Hall has developed a reputation for touring tirelessly having completed multiple tours throughout Australia, Japan, Europe, UK and America. In addition to this Hall has also completed a number of sound based installations and exhibited works globally.
Hall is also the recipient of the 2009 Brisbane Lord Mayors Fellowship that allowed him to complete a four-month residency in San Francisco, USA.
During his career Hall has worked with and played alongside artists such as Steinbruchel, Sawako, Tim Hecker, Jason Khan, Lawrence English, Takashi Kojima, Haco, Birchville Cat Motel, Isis, Health (band), Lichens and Max Cooper.
Hall is also a member of AXXONN. A stream-line electronic music project that transcends pop/electro/doom and noise.


6249 Jennifer


Preparation (music)

In tonal music, a preparation is the consonant pitch or chord which precedes a dissonant nonharmonic tone. The move from a dissonance to a consonance constitutes a resolution.
In the following example, the C major chord on the left is a preparation which precedes a nonharmonic tone that serves as an anticipation (center, marked in red) to the G major harmony on the right. This harmony resolves the preceding dissonance:


National Standard Examination in Biology

The National Standard Examination in Biology or NSEB is an examination for biology for higher secondary school students in India, usually conducted in the end of November. The examination is organized by the Association of Teachers in Biological Sciences in association with Indian Association of Physics Teachers and Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE). Each year over 30,000 students of 12th Standard or below , sit for this examination.
Eligibility.
The examination is intended for students in 12th standard, though 11th standard students are also allowed to give the examination. Usually, the qualifying students are from 12th standard.
Qualification.
There is a designated statewise quota according to which the students are selected for the next stage i.e. INBO. Further all students scoring greater than 80% of the average of the top ten scores at national level(called as Merit Index Score) get automatically selected irrespective of the statewise quota.
Usually the top 1% students from this examination are selected to sit for the Indian National Biology Olympiad.
Format.
The NSEB comprises only multiple choice questions. The questions include plant physiology, genetics and human physiology. The stress on biochemistry is more in the NSEB than in the typical school syllabi.
Fee.
As per new revised norms the fee for the NSEB is about Rs. 150. Application for this examination is typically handled through the school/college to which the student is affiliated.
Indian National Biology Olympiad.
It's held in January, and consists of objective as well as subjective questions. The top 35 performers here, are selected for the Orientation-Cum-Selection-Camp (OCSC), Biology , where they're trained and tested in theory and experiment. The top 4 performers from OCSC Biology are selected to represent India in the International Biology Olympiad.
Before IBO, the selected team undergoes rigorous training in theory and experiment, in a Pre-Departure Training Camp (PDC).


Diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy

Diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) is an infrared spectroscopy sampling technique used on powder samples without prior preparation. The sample is added to a sample cup and the data is collected on the bulk sample. The infrared light on a sample is reflected and transmitted at different amounts depending on the bulk properties of the material. Diffuse reflection of the incident light produced by the sample's rough surface reflection in all directions is collected by use of an ellipsoid or paraboloid mirror. Shape, compactness, refractive index, reflectivity and absorption of the particles are all characteristic of the material being analyzed. If the sample is too absorbent, then it can be diluted with a nonabsorbent material such as potassium bromide, potassium chloride, etc. The particle size should be smaller than the wavelength of the incident light in order to minimize Mie scattering, so this would infer that it should be less than 5 µm for mid-infrared spectroscopy. The spectra are plotted in units of log inverse reflectance (log 1/R) versus wavenumber. Alternative plots of Kubelka-Munk units can be used, which relate reflectance to concentration using a scaling factor. A reflectance standard is needed in order to quantify the reflectance of the sample because it cannot be determined directly.


3S (music)


4686 Maisica


Glimpse of the Garden

Glimpse of the Garden is a 1957 five-minute short experimental film made by Marie Menken, showing film clips of a garden, with birds chirping for the soundtrack.
In 1958, the film won an award at the Exposition Universelle et Internationale at Brussels. In 2007, the film was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation.


Sensistor

Sensistor is a resistor whose resistance changes with temperature.
The resistance increases exponentially with temperature, that is the temperature coefficient is positive (e.g. 0.7% per degree Celsius).
Sensistors are used in electronic circuits for compensation of temperature influence or as sensors of temperature for other circuits.
Sensistors are made by using very heavily doped semiconductors so that their operation is similar to PTC-type thermistors. However, very heavily doped semiconductor behaves more like a metal and the resistance change is more gradual than it is the case for other PTC thermistors.


Yangcheng Evening News

Yangcheng Evening News or "Ram City Evening News" (), also known as "Yangcheng Evening Post" or "Ram City Evening Post", is a Chinese newspaper in the Standard Chinese language, national unified publication number CN44-0006 in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
History.
The publication of "Yangcheng Evening Post" was started on October 1, 1957, in Guangzhou, China. The newspaper was forced to stop publication during the Cultural Revolution and resumed publication on February 15, 1980. Started from May 18, 1998, the paper became among several newspapers published by the Yangcheng Evening News Group.
"Yangcheng Evening Post" is one of the world's largest circulated newspapers: in 2008, its daily circulation was estimated to be 1,170,000, distributed mainly in the Pearl River Delta area in southern China.


2040 Chalonge


National Large Solar Telescope

The National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) is a Gregorian multi-purpose open telescope proposed to be built in Merak village in Ladakh in India and aims to study the sun's microscopic structure.
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics is the nodal agency charged with various scientific bodies like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational-Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) also participating.
Location.
The proposed site for the location of the telescope is Merak Village in Ladakh, India. The village is near Pangong Lake.
Telescope.
NLST is proposed to be on-axis alt-azimuth Gregorian multi-purpose open telescope with the provision of carrying out night time stellar observations using a spectrograph. It hopes to resolve features on the Sun of the size of about 0.1 arcsec. The focal plane instruments are to include a high resolution polarimeteric package to measure polarization with an accuracy of 0.01 per cent; a high spectral resolution spectrograph to obtain spectra in 5 widely separated absorption lines simultaneously and high spatial resolution narrow band imagers in various lines.


Soundtrack from the Film Mabuta no Ura

Soundtrack from the Film Mabuta no Ura is the ninth studio album by Japanese experimental band Boris, released on June 29, 2005 through Catune and Inoxia and on November 12 of the same year through Essence Music. The album includes the song "A Bao A Qu" which shares the same name as the version included on the album "The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked". However, both versions are quite different from one another. The band used this version of the song "A Bao A Qu" and created a 7" single with an extended version of the track. A music video was also released for this song but it is based on the 7" single. There is yet another version of the song which was included on the 2010 compilation, "Boris / Variations + Live in Japan", and a live recording is included in "Archive II". The 2016 re-release of "Pink" includes a bonus disc with the track "Your Name Part 2," apparently a sequel to the track of that name from this album.
Album title.
Though the title describes the album as a soundtrack for the film "Mabuta no Ura" (lit. "Under the Eyelids"), no such film exists. The album is rather the result of the band imagining a film in their heads and writing a soundtrack for it. Because of this, the band has classified this as a concept album. The album's concept is also driven by photography and art-styling which is included on a version of the album.
Release.
Two versions of this album exist. The first one is the version of the album was released on CD by the label Catune. This version was housed on brown packaging which included story cards with photos and the stories and lyrics in Japanese. Inoxia released this version of the album on an LP limited to 600 copies with a different cover and photo book. The second version was released by the Brazilian label Essence Music, limited to 2000 copies, this version has a different arrangement and song list to the other versions mentioned above. This version shows the same cover as the LP version and includes numerous photos, story card materials, and lyrics in English. They also made a special box-set edition limited to 199 hand-numbered copies that contained art prints, flyers, and a bunch of dead flowers.


2956 Yeomans

2956 Yeomans, provisional designation , is a stony asteroid from the central regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 28 April 1982, by astronomer Edward Bowell at the Anderson Mesa Station of the Lowell Observatory in near Flagstaff, Arizona. It was named after American astronomer Donald Keith Yeomans.
Orbit and classification.
"Yeomans" is a non-family asteroid from the asteroid belt's background population. It orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.5–3.0 AU once every 4 years and 7 months (1,679 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.09 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic.
The asteroid was first identified as at the Johannesburg Observatory in May 1950. The body's observation arc begins with its identification as at Crimea–Nauchnij in September 1974, almost 8 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.
Physical characteristics.
In the SMASS classification, "Yeomans" is an Sr-subtype that transitions from the stony S-types to the uncommon R-type asteroids.
Rotation period.
In April 2014, a rotational lightcurve of "Yeomans" was obtained from photometric observations made at the Isaac Aznar Observatory in Spain. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 3.4 hours with a brightness variation of 0.28 magnitude (). A similar period of 3.509 hours with an amplitude of 0.24 magnitude was found by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in October 2011 ().
Diameter and albedo.
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, "Yeomans" measures 9.350 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.292. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a diameter of 11.30 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.1.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after American astronomer Donald Keith Yeomans, a celestial mechanician at JPL and astrometry-expert of the International Halley Watch. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 September 1986 ().


Malvidin glucoside-ethyl-catechin

Malvidin glucoside-ethyl-catechin is a flavanol-anthocyanin adduct. Flavanol-anthocyanin adducts are formed during wine ageing through reactions between anthocyanins and tannins present in grape, with yeast metabolites such as acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde-induced reactions yield ethyl-linked species such as malvidin glucoside-ethyl-catechin.
This compound has a better color stability at pH 5.5 than malvidin-3O-glucoside. When the pH was increased from 2.2 to 5.5, the solution of the pigment became progressively more violet (λmax = 560 nm at pH 5.5), whereas similar solutions of the anthocyanin were almost colorless at pH 4.0.
Other types of aldehyde, such as isovaleraldehyde, benzaldehyde, propionaldehyde, isobutyraldehyde, formaldehyde or 2-methylbutyraldehyde, show the same reactivity in model solutions.


The Text of Light

The Text of Light is a 1974 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.
Synopsis.
Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures, shot entirely through a glass ashtray.
Reception.
The film received a positive reception, rating 6,4 out of 10 on IMDb.


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.