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🔗 Greece 🔗 Politics 🔗 Elections and Referendums

In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, or Stochocracy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. Filling individual posts or, more usually in its modern applications, to fill collegiate chambers. The system intends to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It also minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections, by contrast, foster it. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.

Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).

🔗 Computing 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Systems 🔗 Systems/Operations research

Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the results are often used when making business decisions about the resources needed to provide a service.

Queueing theory has its origins in research by Agner Krarup Erlang when he created models to describe the system of Copenhagen Telephone Exchange company, a Danish company. The ideas have since seen applications including telecommunication, traffic engineering, computing and, particularly in industrial engineering, in the design of factories, shops, offices and hospitals, as well as in project management.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Gender Studies 🔗 Men's Issues

The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case. The phrase was coined by Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic in 1994 after finding that both male and female participants tend to assign positive traits to women, with female participants showing a far more pronounced bias. Positive traits were assigned to men by participants of both genders, but to a far lesser degree.

The authors supposed that the positive general evaluation of women might derive from the association between women and nurturing characteristics. This bias is suggested as a form of misandry/'benevolent misogyny', the latter being a concept within the theoretical framework of ambivalent sexism.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Germany/Hamburg 🔗 Germany/German transportation

Old Elbe Tunnel or St. Pauli Elbe Tunnel (German: Alter Elbtunnel colloquially or St. Pauli Elbtunnel officially) which opened in 1911, is a pedestrian and vehicle tunnel in Hamburg. The 426 m (1,398 ft) long tunnel was a technical sensation; 24 m (80 ft) beneath the surface, two 6 m (20 ft) diameter tubes connect central Hamburg with the docks and shipyards on the south side of the river Elbe. This was a big improvement for tens of thousands of workers in one of the busiest harbors in the world.

Six large lifts on either side of the tunnel carry pedestrians and vehicles to the bottom. The two tunnels are both still in operation, though due to their limited capacity by today's standards, other bridges and tunnels have been built and taken over most of the traffic.

In 2008 approximately 300,000 cars, 63,000 bicycles, and 700,000 pedestrians used the tunnel. The tunnel is opened 24 hours for pedestrians and bicycles. For motorized vehicles, opening times are currently Monday to Friday from 5:20 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on Saturdays from 5:20 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Japan

Toilet meal (Japanese: 便所飯, benjo-meshi) is a Japanese slang term and social phenomenon referring to the act of an individual eating a meal in a toilet room. In modern Japan, some people eat alone in a bathroom for various reasons; the most common reason is that they do not wish to be seen eating alone. Other reasons include saving money from eating out, to hide from co-workers in a busy workplace, or simply because they find it more comfortable.

Since toilet meals are often solitary and clandestine, others are unlikely to be aware of its occurrence. For this reason, "toilet meals" were initially regarded as an urban legend, but subsequent investigations have confirmed the phenomenon as relatively widespread. The term "toilet meal" has even been referenced in various popular media, most notably in various Japanese television shows.

🔗 Spaceflight

Project Starlight is a research project of the University of California, Santa Barbara to develop a fleet of laser beam-propelled interstellar probes and sending them to a star neighboring the Solar System, potentially Alpha Centauri. The project aims to send organisms on board the probe.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Human rights 🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/mass media in Russia 🔗 Politics 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors 🔗 Women writers 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Journalism 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Russia/politics and law of Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (Russian: Анна Степановна Политковская, IPA: [ˈanːə sʲtʲɪˈpanəvnə pəlʲɪtˈkofskəjə]; Ukrainian: Ганна Степанівна Політковська, IPA: [ˈɦɑnːɐ steˈpɑn⁽ʲ⁾iu̯nɐ pol⁽ʲ⁾itˈkɔu̯sʲkɐ]; née Mazepa, Мазепа, IPA: [mɐˈzɛpɐ]; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist, and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years, she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.

Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Putin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.

On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention. In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Astronomy/Astronomical objects

iPTF14hls is an unusual supernova star that erupted continuously for about 1,000 days beginning in September 2014 before becoming a remnant nebula. It had previously erupted in 1954. None of the theories nor proposed hypotheses fully explain all the aspects of the object.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Astronomy

Gauss's Pythagorean right triangle proposal is an idea attributed to Carl Friedrich Gauss for a method to signal extraterrestrial beings by constructing an immense right triangle and three squares on the surface of the Earth. The shapes would be a symbolic representation of the Pythagorean theorem, large enough to be seen from the Moon or Mars.

Although credited in numerous sources as originating with Gauss, with exact details of the proposal set out, the specificity of detail, and even whether Gauss made the proposal, have been called into question. Many of the earliest sources do not actually name Gauss as the originator, instead crediting a "German astronomer" or using other nonspecific descriptors, and in some cases naming a different author entirely. The details of the proposal also change significantly upon different retellings. Nevertheless, Gauss's writings reveal a belief and interest in finding a method to contact extraterrestrial life, and that he did, at the least, propose using amplified light using a heliotrope, his own 1818 invention, to signal supposed inhabitants of the Moon.

🔗 United States 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Computing/Early computers 🔗 United States/Iowa

The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital computer. Limited by the technology of the day, and execution, the device has remained somewhat obscure. The ABC's priority is debated among historians of computer technology, because it was neither programmable, nor Turing-complete. Conventionally, the ABC would be considered the first electronic ALU (arithmetic logic unit) – which is integrated into every modern processor's design.

Its unique contribution was to make computing faster by being the first to use vacuum tubes to do the arithmetic calculations. Prior to this, slower electro-mechanical methods were used by Konrad Zuse's Z1, and the simultaneously developed Harvard Mark I. The first electronic, programmable, digital machine, the Colossus computer from 1943 to 1945, used similar tube-based technology as ABC.