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🔗 Psychology 🔗 Animal rights

The Pit of despair was a name used by American comparative psychologist Harry Harlow for a device he designed, technically called a vertical chamber apparatus, that he used in experiments on rhesus macaque monkeys at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the 1970s. The aim of the research was to produce an animal model of clinical depression. Researcher Stephen Suomi described the device as "little more than a stainless-steel trough with sides that sloped to a rounded bottom":

A ​³⁄₈ in. wire mesh floor 1 in. above the bottom of the chamber allowed waste material to drop through the drain and out of holes drilled in the stainless-steel. The chamber was equipped with a food box and a water-bottle holder, and was covered with a pyramid top [removed in the accompanying photograph], designed to discourage incarcerated subjects from hanging from the upper part of the chamber.

Harlow had already placed newly born monkeys in isolation chambers for up to one year. With the "Pit of despair", he placed monkeys between three months and three years old in the chamber alone, after they had bonded with their mothers, for up to ten weeks. Within a few days, they had stopped moving about and remained huddled in a corner.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how and why it is that some internal states are subjective, felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than merely nonsubjective, unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster. The philosopher David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness, contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, and so forth. Easy problems are (relatively) easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, regardless of how complex or poorly understood the phenomena of the easy problems may be, they can eventually be understood by relying entirely on standard scientific methodologies. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from this set and will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial. It has been accepted by philosophers of mind such as Joseph Levine, Colin McGinn, and Ned Block and cognitive neuroscientists such as Francisco Varela, Giulio Tononi, and Christof Koch. However, its existence is disputed by philosophers of mind such as Daniel Dennett, Massimo Pigliucci, and Keith Frankish and cognitive neuroscientists such as Stanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars.

🔗 Mathematics

In mathematics, tetration (or hyper-4) is an operation based on iterated, or repeated, exponentiation. It is the next hyperoperation after exponentiation, but before pentation. The word was coined by Reuben Louis Goodstein from tetra- (four) and iteration.

Under the definition as repeated exponentiation, the notation ${\displaystyle {^{n}a}}$ means ${\displaystyle {a^{a^{\cdot ^{\cdot ^{a}}}}}}$, where n copies of a are iterated via exponentiation, right-to-left, I.e. the application of exponentiation ${\displaystyle n-1}$ times. n is called the "height" of the function, while a is called the "base," analogous to exponentiation. It would be read as "the nth tetration of a".

Tetration is also defined recursively as

${\displaystyle {^{n}a}:={\begin{cases}1&{\text{if }}n=0\\a^{\left(^{(n-1)}a\right)}&{\text{if }}n>0\end{cases}}}$,

allowing for attempts to extend tetration to non-natural numbers such as real and complex numbers.

The two inverses of tetration are called the super-root and the super-logarithm, analogous to the nth root and the logarithmic functions. None of the three functions are elementary.

Tetration is used for the notation of very large numbers.

🔗 Mathematics

In mathematics, Euler's identity (also known as Euler's equation) is the equality

${\displaystyle e^{i\pi }+1=0}$

where

e is Euler's number, the base of natural logarithms,

i is the imaginary unit, which by definition satisfies i² = −1, and

π is pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Euler's identity is named after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. It is considered to be an exemplar of mathematical beauty as it shows a profound connection between the most fundamental numbers in mathematics.

🔗 United States

The mean center of the United States population is determined by the United States Census Bureau from the results of each national census. The Bureau defines it as follows:

The concept of the center of population as used by the U.S. Census Bureau is that of a balance point. The center of population is the point at which an imaginary, weightless, rigid, and flat (no elevation effects) surface representation of the 50 states (or 48 conterminous states for calculations made prior to 1960) and the District of Columbia would balance if weights of identical size were placed on it so that each weight represented the location on one person. More specifically, this calculation is called the mean center of population.

After moving roughly 600 mi (966 km) west by south during the 19th century, the shift in the mean center of population during the 20th century was less pronounced, moving 324 mi (521 km) west and 101 mi (163 km) south. Nearly 79% of the overall southerly movement happened between 1950 and 2000. Given the strong pull of Texas, Florida, and the Western US, the population center would be heading towards and one day entering Oklahoma.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Ethics

The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, refers to the practical difficulties encountered in the pursuit of pleasure. For the hedonist, constant pleasure-seeking may not yield the most actual pleasure or happiness in the long run—or even in the short run, when consciously pursuing pleasure interferes with experiencing it.

The utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick was first to note in The Methods of Ethics that the paradox of hedonism is that pleasure cannot be acquired directly. Variations on this theme appear in the realms of ethics, philosophy, psychology, and economics.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computer science 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Computer science

Comb sort is a relatively simple sorting algorithm originally designed by Włodzimierz Dobosiewicz and Artur Borowy in 1980, later rediscovered by Stephen Lacey and Richard Box in 1991. Comb sort improves on bubble sort.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Indonesia

British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to by its callsign Speedbird 9 or as the Jakarta incident, was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Bombay, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne.

On 24 June 1982, the route was flown by the City of Edinburgh, a Boeing 747-200. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung (approximately 110 miles (180 km) south-east of Jakarta, Indonesia), resulting in the failure of all four engines. The reason for the failure was not immediately apparent to the crew or air traffic control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft glided out of the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one failed again soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely at the Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta.

The crew members of the accident segment had boarded the aircraft in Kuala Lumpur, while many of the passengers had been aboard since the flight began in London.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing

Worse is better, also called New Jersey style, was conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in an essay "Worse is better" to describe the dynamics of software acceptance, but it has broader application. It is the subjective idea that quality does not necessarily increase with functionality—that there is a point where less functionality ("worse") is a preferable option ("better") in terms of practicality and usability. Software that is limited, but simple to use, may be more appealing to the user and market than the reverse.

As to the oxymoronic title, Gabriel calls it a caricature, declaring the style bad in comparison with "The Right Thing". However he also states that "it has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing" development style and is superior to the "MIT Approach" with which he contrasted it in the original essay.