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🔗 Greece 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Languages

The Greek language question (Greek: το γλωσσικό ζήτημα, to glossikó zítima) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Psychology

Accuracy and precision are two measures of observational error. Accuracy is how close a given set of measurements (observations or readings) are to their true value. Precision is how close the measurements are to each other.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines a related measure: trueness, "the closeness of agreement between the arithmetic mean of a large number of test results and the true or accepted reference value."

While precision is a description of random errors (a measure of statistical variability), accuracy has two different definitions:

1. More commonly, a description of systematic errors (a measure of statistical bias of a given measure of central tendency, such as the mean). In this definition of "accuracy", the concept is independent of "precision", so a particular set of data can be said to be accurate, precise, both, or neither. This concept corresponds to ISO's trueness.
2. A combination of both precision and trueness, accounting for the two types of observational error (random and systematic), so that high accuracy requires both high precision and high trueness. This usage corresponds to ISO's definition of accuracy (trueness and precision).

🔗 United States 🔗 Cities 🔗 United States/Texas 🔗 Dallas-Fort Worth

Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly 350 square miles (910 km²) into Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise counties. Fort Worth's population was 918,915 as of the official 2020 U.S. census count, making it the 11th-most populous city in the United States. Fort Worth is the second-largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, after Dallas, and the metropolitan area is the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the most populous in Texas.

The city of Fort Worth was established in 1849 as an army outpost on a bluff overlooking the Trinity River. Fort Worth has historically been a center of the Texas Longhorn cattle trade. It still embraces its Western heritage and traditional architecture and design. USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) is the first ship of the United States Navy named after the city. Nearby Dallas has held a population majority in the metropolitan area for as long as records have been kept, yet Fort Worth has become one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States.

The city is the location of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and several museums designed by contemporary architects. The Kimbell Art Museum was designed by Louis Kahn, with an additional designs by Renzo Piano. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was designed by Tadao Ando. The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, designed by Philip Johnson, houses American art. The Sid Richardson Museum, redesigned by David M. Schwarz, has a collection of Western art in the United States emphasizing Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History was designed by Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico.

In addition, the city of Fort Worth is the location of several universities including, University of Texas at Arlington, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan, University of North Texas Health Science Center, and Texas A&M University School of Law. Several multinational corporations, including Bell Textron, American Airlines, and BNSF Railway, are headquartered in Fort Worth.

🔗 Economics

The term exorbitant privilege (privilège exorbitant in French) refers to the benefits the United States has due to its own currency (the US dollar) being the international reserve currency. For example, the US would not face a balance of payments crisis, because their imports are purchased in their own currency. Exorbitant privilege as a concept cannot refer to currencies that have a regional reserve currency role, only to global reserve currencies.

Academically, the exorbitant privilege literature analyzes two empirical puzzles, the position puzzle and the income puzzle. The position puzzle refers to the difference between the (negative) U.S. net international investment position (NIIP) and the accumulated U.S. current account deficits, the former being much smaller than the latter. The income puzzle is that despite a deeply negative NIIP, the U.S. income balance is positive, i.e. despite having much more liabilities than assets, earned income is higher than interest expenses.

🔗 Disability

Body doubling or parallel working is a strategy used to initiate and complete tasks, such as household chores or writing and other computer tasks. It involves the physical presence, virtual presence through a phone call, videotelephony or social media presence, of someone with whom one shares their goals, which makes it more likely to achieve them. For some people, it works best to both do similar tasks, while for others, just being in the same (virtual) room is enough.

It was partially popularized by those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to help manage symptoms. Its usefulness has also been noted by those with autism, but efficacy is not clearly known as long term studies have not been conducted on the topic. In 2023, J. Russel Ramsay, professor of clinical psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine and co-director of the ADHD treatment and research program of the University of Pennsylvania, noted that, while extensive research on the strategy's effect on productivity doesn't exist, "the idea of externalizing motivation is a longstanding evidence-based mechanism for managing ADHD."

ADHD body doubling comes into play allowing individuals with ADHD to perform and complete tasks more easily and with less distractions, where otherwise they might struggle more. "ADHD body doubling is a productivity strategy used by individuals with ADHD to finish possibly annoying jobs while having another person beside them."

Body doubling is said to aid individuals with focus and productivity while working. Another person, known as a 'body double' sits alongside the individual with ADHD to help them focus while completing a certain task. The role of this individual is to not partake in the task but, more importantly, serve as a support system and create a welcoming environment that allows the individual to focus by reducing any distractions. The idea of body doubling allows for specific reminders to the individual to stay on task which helps alleviate the symptoms of ADHD.

🔗 Law 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Writing

Argumentation theory is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real-world settings.

Argumentation includes various forms of dialogue such as deliberation and negotiation which are concerned with collaborative decision-making procedures. It also encompasses eristic dialogue, the branch of social debate in which victory over an opponent is the primary goal, and didactic dialogue used for teaching. This discipline also studies the means by which people can express and rationally resolve or at least manage their disagreements.

Argumentation is a daily occurrence, such as in public debate, science, and law. For example in law, in courts by the judge, the parties and the prosecutor, in presenting and testing the validity of evidences. Also, argumentation scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify decisions they have made irrationally.

Argumentation is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, description, and narration.

🔗 Birds 🔗 Mythology

The barnacle goose myth is a widely-reported historical misconception about the breeding habits of the barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis) and brant goose (Branta bernicla). One version of the myth is that these geese emerge fully formed from goose barnacles (Cirripedia). Other myths exist about how the barnacle goose supposedly emerges and grows from matter other than bird eggs.

The etymology of the term "barnacle" suggests Latin, Old English, and French roots. There are few references in pre-Christian books and manuscripts – some Roman or Greek. The main vector for the myth into modern times was monastic manuscripts and in particular the bestiary.

The myth owes its long-standing popularity to an early ignorance of the migration patterns of geese. Early medieval discussions of the nature of living organisms were often based on myths or genuine ignorance of what is now known about phenomena such as bird migration. It was not until the late 19th century that bird migration research showed that such geese migrate northwards to nest and breed in Greenland or northern Scandinavia.

🔗 Computing

Compound File Binary Format (CFBF), also called Compound File, Compound Document format, or Composite Document File V2 (CDF), is a compound document file format for storing numerous files and streams within a single file on a disk. CFBF is developed by Microsoft and is an implementation of Microsoft COM Structured Storage. The file format is used for storing storage objects and stream objects in a hierarchical structure within a single file.

Microsoft has opened the format for use by others and it is now used in a variety of programs from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Access to Business Objects. It also forms the basis of the Advanced Authoring Format.

🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Aviation/aircraft engine 🔗 Ships

A toroidal propeller is a type of propeller that is ring-shaped with each blade forming a closed loop. The propellers are significantly quieter at audible frequency ranges, between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, while generating comparable thrust to traditional propellers. In practice, toroidal propellers reduce noise pollution in both aviation and maritime transport.

🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science

In cryptography and steganography, plausibly deniable encryption describes encryption techniques where the existence of an encrypted file or message is deniable in the sense that an adversary cannot prove that the plaintext data exists.

The users may convincingly deny that a given piece of data is encrypted, or that they are able to decrypt a given piece of encrypted data, or that some specific encrypted data exists. Such denials may or may not be genuine. For example, it may be impossible to prove that the data is encrypted without the cooperation of the users. If the data is encrypted, the users genuinely may not be able to decrypt it. Deniable encryption serves to undermine an attacker's confidence either that data is encrypted, or that the person in possession of it can decrypt it and provide the associated plaintext.

In their pivotal 1996 paper, Ran Canetti, Cynthia Dwork, Moni Naor, and Rafail Ostrovsky introduced the concept of deniable encryption, a cryptographic breakthrough that ensures privacy even under coercion. This concept allows encrypted communication participants to plausibly deny the true content of their messages. Their work lays the foundational principles of deniable encryption, illustrating its critical role in protecting privacy against forced disclosures. This research has become a cornerstone for future advancements in cryptography, emphasizing the importance of deniable encryption in maintaining communication security. The notion of deniable encryption was used by Julian Assange and Ralf Weinmann in the Rubberhose filesystem.