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🔗 Robotics

An eigenface () is the name given to a set of eigenvectors when used in the computer vision problem of human face recognition. The approach of using eigenfaces for recognition was developed by Sirovich and Kirby (1987) and used by Matthew Turk and Alex Pentland in face classification. The eigenvectors are derived from the covariance matrix of the probability distribution over the high-dimensional vector space of face images. The eigenfaces themselves form a basis set of all images used to construct the covariance matrix. This produces dimension reduction by allowing the smaller set of basis images to represent the original training images. Classification can be achieved by comparing how faces are represented by the basis set.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Networking

Internet 0 is a low-speed physical layer designed to route 'IP over anything.' It was developed at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms by Neil Gershenfeld, Raffi Krikorian, and Danny Cohen. When it was invented, a number of other proposals were being labelled as "internet 2." The name was chosen to emphasize that this was designed to be a slow, but very inexpensive internetworking system, and forestall "high-performance" comparison questions such as "how fast is it?"

Effectively, it would enable a platform for pervasive computing -- everything in a building could be on the same network to share data gathering and actuation. A light switch could turn on a light bulb by sending a packet to it, they can be linked together by the user.

🔗 Business

A shotgun clause (or Texas Shootout Clause) is a term of art, rather than a legal term. It is a specific type of exit provision that may be included in a shareholders' agreement, and may often be referred to as a buy-sell agreement. The shotgun clause allows a shareholder to offer a specific price per share for the other shareholder(s)' shares; the other shareholder(s) must then either accept the offer or buy the offering shareholder's shares at that price per share.

🔗 United States 🔗 Law

In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2008), was an en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on the patenting of method claims, particularly business methods. The Federal Circuit court affirmed the rejection of the patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The court also reiterated the machine-or-transformation test as the (meaning sole) applicable test for patent-eligible subject matter, and stated that the test in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group should no longer be relied upon.

The Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion on appeal (as Bilski v. Kappos) that affirmed the judgment of the CAFC, but revised many aspects of the CAFC's decision. In its decision, handed down on June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the machine-or-transformation test as the sole test of process patent eligibility based on an interpretation of the language of § 101. The majority, however, had high praise for the Federal Circuit opinions, advising that "[s]tudents of patent law would be well advised to study these scholarly opinions."

🔗 Video games

In video games, grinding is performing repetitive tasks, usually for a gameplay advantage or loot but in some cases for purely aesthetic or cosmetic benefits. Many video games use different tactics to implement, or reduce, the amount of grinding in the gameplay. The general use of grinding is for "experience points", or to improve a character's level. In addition, the behavior is sometimes referred to as pushing the bar (leveling up), farming (acquiring loot repeatedly from one source), or catassing.

Mental poker is the common name for a set of cryptographic problems that concerns playing a fair game over distance without the need for a trusted third party. The term is also applied to the theories surrounding these problems and their possible solutions. The name comes from the card game poker which is one of the games to which this kind of problem applies. Similar problems described as two party games are Blum's flipping a coin over a distance, Yao's Millionaires' Problem, and Rabin's oblivious transfer.

The problem can be described thus: "How can one allow only authorized actors to have access to certain information while not using a trusted arbiter?" (Eliminating the trusted third-party avoids the problem of trying to determine whether the third party can be trusted or not, and may also reduce the resources required.)

In poker, this could translate to: "How can we make sure no player is stacking the deck or peeking at other players' cards when we are shuffling the deck ourselves?". In a physical card game, this would be relatively simple if the players were sitting face to face and observing each other, at least if the possibility of conventional cheating can be ruled out. However, if the players are not sitting at the same location but instead are at widely separate locations and pass the entire deck between them (using the postal mail, for instance), this suddenly becomes very difficult. And for electronic card games, such as online poker, where the mechanics of the game are hidden from the user, this is impossible unless the method used is such that it cannot allow any party to cheat by manipulating or inappropriately observing the electronic "deck".

Several protocols for doing this have been suggested, the first by Adi Shamir, Ron Rivest and Len Adleman (the creators of the RSA-encryption protocol). This protocol was the first example of two parties conducting secure computation rather than secure message transmission, employing cryptography; later on due to leaking partial information in the original protocol, this led to the definition of semantic security by Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. The concept of multi-player mental poker was introduced in Moti Yung's 1984 book Cryptoprotocols. The area has later evolved into what is known as secure multi-party computation protocols (for two parties, and multi parties as well).

🔗 Music theory 🔗 Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales

In music theory, the circle of fifths (or circle of fourths) is the relationship among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys. More specifically, it is a geometrical representation of relationships among the 12 pitch classes of the chromatic scale in pitch class space.

🔗 Computer science

In computer science, Linda is a model of coordination and communication among several parallel processes operating upon objects stored in and retrieved from shared, virtual, associative memory. It was developed by Sudhir Ahuja at AT&T Bell Laboratories in collaboration with David Gelernter and Nicholas Carriero at Yale University in 1986.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Systems 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Systems/Visualization 🔗 Graphic design

Edward Rolf Tufte (; born March 14, 1942) is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization.