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πŸ”— Naismith's Rule

πŸ”— Sports

Naismith's rule helps with the planning of a walking or hiking expedition by calculating how long it will take to travel the intended route, including any extra time taken when walking uphill. This rule of thumb was devised by William W. Naismith, a Scottish mountaineer, in 1892. A modern version can be formulated as follows:

Allow one hour for every 3 miles (5Β km) forward, plus an additional hour for every 2,000 feet (600Β m) of ascent.

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πŸ”— Pentaborane(9)

πŸ”— Chemicals

Pentaborane(9) is an inorganic compound with the formula B5H9. It is one of the most common boron hydride clusters, although it is a highly reactive compound. Because of its high reactivity with oxygen, it was once evaluated as rocket or jet fuel. Like many of the smaller boron hydrides, pentaborane is colourless, diamagnetic, and volatile. It is related to pentaborane(11) (B5H11).

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πŸ”— Passage Du Gois

πŸ”— France πŸ”— Cycling

The Passage du Gois (French pronunciation: [pasaΚ’ dy Ι‘wa]) or GΓ΄a is a causeway between Beauvoir-sur-Mer and the island of Noirmoutier, in VendΓ©e on the Atlantic coast of France. The causeway is 4.125 kilometres (2.6Β mi) long and is flooded twice a day by the high tide. A road runs along the causeway.

Every year, a foot race – the FoulΓ©es du Gois – is held across it, starting at the onset of high tide.

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πŸ”— Gakken Ex-System

πŸ”— Toys

The Gakken EX-System is a series of educational electronics kits produced by Gakken in the late 1970s. The kits use denshi blocks (also known as electronic blocks) to allow electronics experiments to be performed easily and safely. Over 25 years after its original release, one of the main kits from the series was reissued in Japan in 2002.

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πŸ”— Ultraviolet catastrophe

πŸ”— Physics πŸ”— History of Science

The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was the prediction of late 19th century to early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium would emit an unbounded quantity of energy as wavelength decreased into the ultraviolet range.:β€Š6–7β€Š The term "ultraviolet catastrophe" was first used in 1911 by Paul Ehrenfest, but the concept originated with the 1900 statistical derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law.

The phrase refers to the fact that the empirically derived Rayleigh–Jeans law, which accurately predicted experimental results at large wavelengths, failed to do so for short wavelengths. (See the image for further elaboration.) As the theory diverged from empirical observations when these frequencies reached the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, there was a problem. This problem was later found to be due to a property of quanta as proposed by Max Planck: There could be no fraction of a discrete energy package already carrying minimal energy.

Since the first use of this term, it has also been used for other predictions of a similar nature, as in quantum electrodynamics and such cases as ultraviolet divergence.

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πŸ”— Velotype Keyboard

πŸ”— Technology πŸ”— Occupational Safety and Health πŸ”— Brands πŸ”— Typography πŸ”— Netherlands

Velotype is the trademark for a type of keyboard for typing text known as a syllabic chord keyboard, an invention of the Dutchmen Nico Berkelmans and Marius den Outer.

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πŸ”— Human Anti-Mouse Antibody

πŸ”— Pharmacology

Human anti-mouse antibody or human anti-murine antibody (HAMA) is an antibody found in humans which reacts to immunoglobins found in mice.

πŸ”— Artificio de Juanelo

The Artificio de Juanelo ("Gianello's artifice") was the name of two devices built in Toledo in the 16th century by Juanelo Turriano. They were designed to supply the city with a source of readily available water by lifting it from the Tagus (Tajo) river to the AlcΓ‘zar. Now in ruins, the precise details of the operation of the devices are unknown, but at the time they were considered engineering wonders.

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πŸ”— Los Alamos Chess

πŸ”— Chess

Los Alamos chess (or anti-clerical chess) is a chess variant played on a 6Γ—6 board without bishops. This was the first chess-like game played by a computer program. This program was written at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory by Paul Stein and Mark Wells for the MANIAC I computer in 1956. The reduction of the board size and the number of pieces from standard chess was due to the very limited capacity of computers at the time.

The program was very simple, containing only about 600 instructions. It was mostly a minimax tree search and could look four plies ahead. For scoring the board at the end of the four-ply lookahead, it estimates a score for material and a score for mobility, then adds them up. Pseudocode for the chess program is described in Figure 11.4 of Newell, 2019. In 1958, a revised version was written for MANIAC II for full 8Γ—8 chess, though its pseudocode was never published. There is a record of a single game by it, circa November 1958 (Table 11.2 of Newell, 2019).

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πŸ”— Snottite

πŸ”— Caves

Snottite, also snoticle, is a microbial mat of single-celled extremophilic bacteria which hang from the walls and ceilings of caves and are similar to small stalactites, but have the consistency of nasal mucus. In the Frasassi Caves in Italy, over 70% of cells in Snottite have been identified as Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans, with smaller populations including an archaeon in the uncultivated 'G-plasma' clade of Thermoplasmatales (>15%) and a bacterium in the Acidimicrobiaceae family (>5%).

The bacteria derive their energy from chemosynthesis of volcanic sulfur compounds including H2S and warm-water solution dripping down from above, producing sulfuric acid. Because of this, their waste products are highly acidic (approaching pH=0), with similar properties to battery acid. Researchers at the University of Texas have suggested that this sulfuric acid may be a more significant cause of cave formation than the usual explanation offered of the carbonic acid formed from carbon dioxide dissolved in water.

Snottites were brought to attention by researchers Diana Northup and Penny Boston studying them (and other organisms) in a toxic sulfur cave called Cueva de Villa Luz (Cave of the Lighted House), in Tabasco, Mexico. Snottites were first discovered in this cave by Jim Pisarowicz in 1986, who also coined the term.

The BBC series Wonders of the Solar System saw Professor Brian Cox examining snottites and positing that if there is life on Mars, it may be similarly primitive and hidden beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

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