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π Law of Jante
The Law of Jante (Danish: Janteloven) is a code of conduct known in Nordic countries that characterizes not conforming, doing things out of the ordinary, or being overtly personally ambitious as unworthy and inappropriate. The attitudes were first formulated in the form of the ten rules of Jante Law by the Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in his satirical novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor, 1933), but the actual attitudes themselves are older. Sandemose portrays the fictional small Danish town Jante, which he modelled upon his native town NykΓΈbing Mors in the 1930s, where nobody was anonymous, which is typical of all small towns and communities.
Used generally in colloquial speech in the Nordic countries as a sociological term to denote a social attitude of disapproval towards expressions of individuality and personal success, it emphasizes adherence to the collective.
Discussed on
- "Law of Jante" | 2024-07-31 | 10 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "The Law of Jante" | 2023-11-19 | 12 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Law of Jante" | 2023-05-23 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Law of Jante" | 2017-09-30 | 87 Upvotes 61 Comments
π Kentucky in Africa
Kentucky in Africa was a colony in present-day Montserrado County, Liberia, founded in 1828 and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. A state affiliate of the American Colonization Society, the Kentucky State Colonization Society raised money to transport people of color from Kentuckyβfreeborn volunteers as well as enslaved individuals set free on the condition that they leave the United States for Liberia. The Kentucky society bought a 40-square-mile (100Β km2) site along the Saint Paul River (quite near the site of the present-day capital city of Monrovia) and named it Kentucky in Africa. Clay-Ashland. named after Henry Clay's Ashland Plantation, was the colony's primary settlement.
Notable residents of Kentucky in Africa include Alfred Francis Russell, the 10th President of Liberia, and William D. Coleman, the 13th President of Liberia, whose family settled in Clay-Ashland after emigrating from Fayette County, Kentucky.
Kentucky in Africa was annexed by Liberia in about 1847.
π Stanhope (optical bijou)
A stanhope or stanho-scope is an optical device that enables the viewing of microphotographs without using a microscope. They were invented by RenΓ© Dagron in 1857. Dagron bypassed the need for an expensive microscope to view the microscopic photographs by attaching the microphotograph at the end of a modified Stanhope lens. He called the devices bijoux photo-microscopiques or microscopic photo-jewelry.
Discussed on
- "Stanhope (optical bijou)" | 2024-07-28 | 13 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Wikipedia Now with Dark Mode
A light-on-dark color scheme (dark mode, night mode) is available to Wikipedia's smartphone apps and website (for users using the default skins) since July 2024.
In addition to this there is a gadget on English Wikipedia, and various volunteer-written CSS files that allow customization for logged-in users.
Discussed on
- "Wikipedia Now with Dark Mode" | 2024-07-27 | 11 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Conservation-Induced Extinction
Conservation-induced extinction is where efforts to save endangered species lead to the extinction of other species. This mostly threatens the parasite and pathogen species that are highly host-specific to critically endangered hosts. When the last individuals of a host species are captured for the purpose of captive breeding and reintroduction programs, they typically undergo anti-parasitic treatments to increase survival and reproductive success. This practice may unintentionally result in the extinction of the species antagonistic to the target species, such as certain parasites. It has been proposed that the parasites should be reintroduced to the endangered population. A few cases of conservation-induced extinction have occurred in parasitic lice.
Discussed on
- "Conservation-Induced Extinction" | 2024-07-26 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Androgynous Peripheral Attach System
The terms Androgynous Peripheral Attach System (APAS), Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System (APAS) and Androgynous Peripheral Docking System (APDS) are used interchangeably to describe a Russian family of spacecraft docking mechanisms, and are also sometimes used as generic names for any docking system in that family. A system similar to APAS-89/95 is used by the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft.
Discussed on
- "Androgynous Peripheral Attach System" | 2024-07-26 | 23 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Coulomb explosion
Coulombic explosions are a mechanism for transforming energy in intense electromagnetic fields into atomic motion and are thus useful for controlled destruction of relatively robust molecules. The explosions are a prominent technique in laser-based machining, and appear naturally in certain high-energy reactions.
Discussed on
- "Coulomb Explosion" | 2024-07-25 | 62 Upvotes 19 Comments
- "Coulomb explosion" | 2015-03-09 | 94 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Micromouse
Micromouse is an event where small robot mice solve a 16Γ16 maze. It began in the late 1970s. Events are held worldwide, and are most popular in the UK, U.S., Japan, Singapore, India, South Korea and becoming popular in subcontinent countries such as Sri Lanka.
The maze is made up of a 16Γ16 grid of cells, each 180Β mm square with walls 50Β mm high. The mice are completely autonomous robots that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse needs to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. Having reached the goal, the mouse will typically perform additional searches of the maze until it has found an optimal route from the start to the finish. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will run that route in the shortest possible time.
Competitions and conferences are still run regularly.
Discussed on
- "Micromouse" | 2024-07-24 | 136 Upvotes 37 Comments
- "Micromouse" | 2017-12-25 | 131 Upvotes 35 Comments
π Wikimedia community ratifies Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation vetoes it
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- "Wikimedia community ratifies Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation vetoes it" | 2024-07-23 | 38 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Heat pipe β 250x faster heat transfer than copper
A heat pipe is a heat-transfer device that employs phase transition to transfer heat between two solid interfaces.
At the hot interface of a heat pipe, a volatile liquid in contact with a thermally conductive solid surface turns into a vapor by absorbing heat from that surface. The vapor then travels along the heat pipe to the cold interface and condenses back into a liquid, releasing the latent heat. The liquid then returns to the hot interface through capillary action, centrifugal force, or gravity and the cycle repeats.
Due to the very high heat transfer coefficients for boiling and condensation, heat pipes are highly effective thermal conductors. The effective thermal conductivity varies with heat pipe length and can approach 100Β kW/(mβ K) for long heat pipes, in comparison with approximately 0.4Β kW/(mβ K) for copper.
Modern CPU heat pipes are typically made of copper and use water as the working fluid. They are common in many consumer electronics like desktops, laptops, tablets, and high-end smartphones.
Discussed on
- "Heat pipe β 250x faster heat transfer than copper" | 2024-07-22 | 49 Upvotes 34 Comments