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🔗 Technology 🔗 India 🔗 Metalworking

Wootz steel is a crucible steel characterized by a pattern of bands. These bands are formed by sheets of microscopic carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix in higher carbon steel, or by ferrite and pearlite banding in lower carbon steels. It was a pioneering steel alloy developed in Southern India (Tamilakam present day Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka in the 6th century BC and exported globally. It was also known in the ancient world by many different names including ukku, Hindvi steel, Hinduwani steel, Teling steel and seric iron.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Europe

Cluster was a constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft which were launched on the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket, Flight 501, and subsequently lost when that rocket failed to achieve orbit. The launch, which took place on Tuesday, 4 June 1996, ended in failure due to multiple errors in the software design: Dead code (running, but purposeful so only for Ariane 4) with inadequate protection against integer overflow led to an exception handled inappropriately—halting the whole inertial navigation system that otherwise would have been unaffected. This resulted in the rocket veering off its flight path 37 seconds after launch, beginning to disintegrate under high aerodynamic forces, and finally self-destructing by its automated flight termination system. The failure has become known as one of the most infamous and expensive software bugs in history. The failure resulted in a loss of more than US$370 million.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Business and economy 🔗 Video games/Sega

SuperH (or SH) is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems.

At the time of introduction, SuperH was notable for having fixed-length 16-bit instructions in spite of its 32-bit architecture. This was a novel approach; at the time, RISC processors always used an instruction size that was the same as the internal data width, typically 32-bits. Using smaller instructions had consequences, the register file was smaller and instructions were generally two-operand format. But for the market the SuperH was aimed at, this was a small price to pay for the improved memory and processor cache efficiency.

Later versions of the design, starting with SH-5, included both 16- and 32-bit instructions, with the 16-bit versions mapping onto the 32-bit version inside the CPU. This allowed the machine code to continue using the shorter instructions to save memory, while not demanding the amount of instruction decoding logic needed if they were completely separate instructions. This concept is now known as a compressed instruction set and is also used by other companies, the most notable example being ARM for its Thumb instruction set.

As of 2015, many of the original patents for the SuperH architecture are expiring and the SH-2 CPU has been reimplemented as open source hardware under the name J2.

🔗 Writing systems 🔗 Deaf 🔗 Project-independent assessment

Sutton SignWriting, or simply SignWriting, is a writing system for sign languages. It can be used to write any sign language, including American Sign Language, Brazilian Sign Language, Tunisian Sign Language, and many others.

SignWriting is the only international writing system for sign languages. It has been used to publish young adult fiction, translate the Bible, caption YouTube videos, and study sign language literacy.

The SignWriting system is visually iconic: its symbols depict the hands, face, and body of a signer. And unlike most writing systems, which are written linearly, the symbols of SignWriting are written two-dimensionally, to represent the signing space.

SignWriting was invented in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a ballet dancer who eight years earlier had developed a dance notation named Sutton DanceWriting. The current standardized form of SignWriting is known as the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA).

🔗 Film 🔗 Film/American cinema 🔗 Science Fiction

They Live is a 1988 American science fiction action horror film written and directed by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, the film follows an unnamed drifter who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.

Having acquired the film rights to the Nelson-penned short story prior to the production of They Live, Carpenter used the story as the basis for the screenplay's structure, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Frank Armitage". Carpenter has stated that the themes of They Live stemmed from his dissatisfaction with the economic policies of then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, as well as what Carpenter saw as increasing commercialization in both popular culture and politics.

They Live was a minor success upon release, debuting at #1 at the North American box office. It initially received negative reviews from critics, who lambasted its social commentary, writing, and acting; however, it later gained a cult following and experienced a significantly more favorable critical reception. It is now regarded by many as one of Carpenter's best films. The film has also entered the pop culture lexicon, notably having a lasting effect on street art (particularly that of Shepard Fairey).

🔗 Physiology

The nasal cycle is the unconscious alternating partial congestion and decongestion of the nasal cavities in humans and other animals. This results in greater airflow through one nostril with periodic alternation between the nostrils. It is a physiological congestion of the nasal conchae, also called the nasal turbinates (curled bony projections within the nasal cavities), due to selective activation of one half of the autonomic nervous system by the hypothalamus. It should not be confused with pathological nasal congestion.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Early computers

The IBM 7950, also known as Harvest, was a one-of-a-kind adjunct to the Stretch computer which was installed at the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Built by IBM, it was delivered in 1962 and operated until 1976, when it was decommissioned. Harvest was designed to be used for cryptanalysis.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Novels

Victory Garden is a work of electronic literature by American author Stuart Moulthrop. It was written in StorySpace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1992. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

🔗 Disaster management 🔗 London 🔗 Occupational Safety and Health 🔗 Beer

The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, London, on 17 October 1814. It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The pressure of the escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total.

The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. The brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats after the accident. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery used to stand. Meux & Co went into liquidation in 1961.

🔗 Greece 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors 🔗 Turkey 🔗 Christianity 🔗 Catholicism 🔗 Christianity/theology 🔗 Greece/Byzantine world 🔗 Christianity/Eastern Orthodoxy 🔗 Christianity/Oriental Orthodoxy 🔗 Christianity/Syriac Christianity 🔗 Christianity/Christian history

The First Council of Nicaea ( ny-SEE-ə; Ancient Greek: Σύνοδος τῆς Νικαίας, romanized: Sýnodos tês Nikaías) was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine I. The Council of Nicaea met from May until the end of July 325.

This ecumenical council was the first of many efforts to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all Christendom. Hosius of Corduba may have presided over its deliberations. Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed, mandating uniform observance of the date of Easter, and promulgation of early canon law.