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🔗 Constructed languages

Whistled languages use whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication. A whistled language is a system of whistled communication which allows fluent whistlers to transmit and comprehend a potentially unlimited number of messages over long distances. Whistled languages are different in this respect from the restricted codes sometimes used by herders or animal trainers to transmit simple messages or instructions. Generally, whistled languages emulate the tones or vowel formants of a natural spoken language, as well as aspects of its intonation and prosody, so that trained listeners who speak that language can understand the encoded message.

Whistled language is rare compared to spoken language, but it is found in cultures around the world. It is especially common in tone languages where the whistled tones transmit the tones of the syllables (tone melodies of the words). This might be because in tone languages the tone melody carries more of the functional load of communication while non-tonal phonology carries proportionally less. The genesis of a whistled language has never been recorded in either case and has not yet received much productive study.

🔗 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.

The exercise paradox, also known as the workout paradox, refers to the finding that physical activity, while essential for maintaining overall health, does not necessarily lead to significant weight loss or increased calorie expenditure. This paradox challenges the common belief that more exercise equates to more calories burned and consequently, more weight loss.

🔗 Metalworking

Biomachining is the machining process of using lithotropic bacteria to remove material from metal parts, contrasted with chemical machining methods such as chemical milling and physical machining methods such as milling. Certain bacteria, such as Thiobacillus ferrooxidans and Thiobacillus thiooxidans, which are also used in the mineral refinement process of bioleaching, utilize the chemical energy from oxidation of iron or copper to fix carbon dioxide from the air. A metal object, when placed in a culture fluid containing these metal-metabolizing bacteria, will have material removed from its surface over time.

Biomachining is ideal for micromachining due to its very low material removal rate. In addition, biomachining is less likely to leave an undesirable surface finish; neither chemical nor physical energy is concentrated on the cutting area, so the possibility of a damaged or burned surface is slim.

This process has been successfully used to cut both pure iron and pure copper.

🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science

PGPfone was a secure voice telephony system developed by Philip Zimmermann in 1995. The PGPfone protocol had little in common with Zimmermann's popular PGP email encryption package, except for the use of the name. It used ephemeral Diffie-Hellman protocol to establish a session key, which was then used to encrypt the stream of voice packets. The two parties compared a short authentication string to detect a Man-in-the-middle attack, which is the most common method of wiretapping secure phones of this type. PGPfone could be used point-to-point (with two modems) over the public switched telephone network, or over the Internet as an early Voice over IP system.

In 1996, there were no protocol standards for Voice over IP. Ten years later, Zimmermann released the successor to PGPfone, Zfone and ZRTP, a newer and secure VoIP protocol based on modern VoIP standards. Zfone builds on the ideas of PGPfone.

According to the MIT PGPfone web page, "MIT is no longer distributing PGPfone. Given that the software has not been maintained since 1997, we doubt it would run on most modern systems."

🔗 Russia 🔗 Europe 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Wine 🔗 Russia/demographics and ethnography of Russia

The alcohol belts of Europe divide Europe by their traditional alcoholic beverages: beer, wine, or spirits. They do not necessarily correspond with current drinking habits, as beer has become the most popular alcoholic drink world-wide. The definitions of these belts are not completely objective.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Islam 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Watches 🔗 Islam/Muslim scholars

Badīʿ az-Zaman Abu l-ʿIzz ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ar-Razāz al-Jazarī (1136–1206, Arabic: بديع الزمان أَبُ اَلْعِزِ إبْنُ إسْماعِيلِ إبْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري‎, IPA: [ældʒæzæriː]) was a Muslim polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, artisan, artist and mathematician. He is best known for writing The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (Arabic: كتاب في معرفة الحيل الهندسية‎, romanized: Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiya, lit. 'Book in knowledge of engineering tricks') in 1206, where he described 100 mechanical devices, some 80 of which are trick vessels of various kinds, along with instructions on how to construct them.

🔗 Computing

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities (Grundspenkis 2007) and the way in which these processes support work activities (Wright 2005). It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning (Smedley 2009). It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM) (Pollard 2008).

🔗 Time 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

Various schemes have been used or proposed for timekeeping on the planet Mars independently of Earth time and calendars.

Mars has an axial tilt and a rotation period similar to those of Earth. Thus, it experiences seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter much like Earth. Coincidentally, the duration of a Martian day is within a few percent of that of an Earth day, which has led to the use of analogous time units. A Mars year is almost twice as long as Earth's, and its orbital eccentricity is considerably larger, which means that the lengths of various Martian seasons differ considerably, and sundial time can diverge from clock time more than on Earth.

🔗 Chess

Kriegspiel is a chess variant invented by Henry Michael Temple in 1899 and based upon the original Kriegsspiel (German for war game) developed by Georg von Reiswitz in 1812. In this game each player can see their own pieces, but not those of their opponent. For this reason, it is necessary to have a third person (or computer) act as an umpire, with full information about the progress of the game. When it is a player's turn he or she will attempt a move, which the umpire will declare to be 'legal' or 'illegal'. If the move is illegal, the player tries again; if it is legal, that move stands. Each player is given information about checks and captures. They may also ask the umpire if there are any legal captures with a pawn. Since the position of the opponent's pieces is unknown, Kriegspiel is a game of imperfect information. The game is sometimes referred to as blind chess.