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🔗 Computing 🔗 Economics 🔗 Computing/Early computers

The MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer) also known as the Phillips Hydraulic Computer and the Financephalograph, was created in 1949 by the New Zealand economist Bill Phillips (William Phillips) to model the national economic processes of the United Kingdom, while Phillips was a student at the London School of Economics (LSE). The MONIAC was an analogue computer which used fluidic logic to model the workings of an economy. The MONIAC name may have been suggested by an association of money and ENIAC, an early electronic digital computer.

🔗 India 🔗 Visual arts

Mauryan polish describes one of the frequent characteristics of architecture and sculptures of the Maurya Empire in India (325 to 185 BCE), which gives a very smooth and shiny surface to the stone material, generally of sandstone or granite. Mauryan polish is found especially in the Ashoka Pillars as well as in some constructions like the Barabar Caves. The technique did not end with the empire, but continued to be "used on occasion up to the first or second century A.D.", although the presence of the polish sometimes complicates dating, as with the Didarganj Yakshi. According to the archaeologist John Marshall: the "extraordinary precision and accuracy which characterizes all Mauryan works, and which has never, we venture to say, been surpassed even by the finest workmanship on Athenian buildings".

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics

The Gompertz curve or Gompertz function is a type of mathematical model for a time series, named after Benjamin Gompertz (1779–1865). It is a sigmoid function which describes growth as being slowest at the start and end of a given time period. The right-side or future value asymptote of the function is approached much more gradually by the curve than the left-side or lower valued asymptote. This is in contrast to the simple logistic function in which both asymptotes are approached by the curve symmetrically. It is a special case of the generalised logistic function. The function was originally designed to describe human mortality, but since has been modified to be applied in biology, with regard to detailing populations.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Aviation/airline

Janet, sometimes called Janet Airlines, is the unofficial name given to a highly classified fleet of passenger aircraft operated for the United States Department of the Air Force as an employee shuttle to transport military and contractor employees. The purpose is to pick up the employees at their home airport, and take them to their place of work. Then, in the afternoon, they take the employees back to their home airports. The airline mainly serves the Nevada National Security Site (most notably Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range), from a private terminal at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport.

The airline's aircraft are generally unmarked, but do have a red paint strip along the windows of the aircraft, which gives some sort of hint at Janet being the operator.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software

WTFPL is a GPL-compatible permissive license most commonly used as a free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain. It allows redistribution and modification of the work under any terms. The title is an abbreviation of "Do what the fuck you want to Public License".

The first version of the WTFPL, released in March 2000, was written by Banlu Kemiyatorn for his own software project. Sam Hocevar, Debian's former project leader, wrote version 2.

🔗 Africa 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Anarchism 🔗 Somalia

Xeer (pronounced [ħeːr]) is the traditional legal system of Somalia, and one of the three systems from which formal Somali law draws its inspiration, the others being civil law and Islamic law. It is believed to pre-date Islam, although it was influenced by Islam and retains many of the faith's conservative elements. Under this system, elders, known as the xeer begti serve as mediator judges and help settle court cases, taking precedent and custom into account. Xeer is polycentric in that different groups within Somali society have different interpretations of xeer.

🔗 Biology 🔗 Politics 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Neuroscience 🔗 Genetics 🔗 Physiology 🔗 Physiology/neuro 🔗 Evolutionary biology 🔗 Conservatism

A number of studies have found that biology can be linked with political orientation. This means that biology is a possible factor in political orientation but may also mean that the ideology a person identifies with changes a person's ability to perform certain tasks. Many of the studies linking biology to politics remain controversial and unreplicated, although the overall body of evidence is growing.

🔗 United States 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities

Nutraloaf (also known as Meal Loaf, prison loaf, disciplinary loaf, food loaf, lockup loaf, confinement loaf, seg loaf, grue or special management meal) is a food served in prisons in the United States and formerly Canada to inmates who have misbehaved; for example, assaulting prison guards or fellow prisoners. It is similar to meatloaf in texture, but has a wider variety of ingredients. Prison loaf is usually bland, perhaps even unpleasant, but prison wardens argue that nutraloaf provides enough nutrition to keep prisoners healthy without requiring utensils to be issued.

🔗 Mathematics

The SKI combinator calculus is a combinatory logic system and a computational system. It can be thought of as a computer programming language, though it is not convenient for writing software. Instead, it is important in the mathematical theory of algorithms because it is an extremely simple Turing complete language. It can be likened to a reduced version of the untyped lambda calculus. It was introduced by Moses Schönfinkel and Haskell Curry.

All operations in lambda calculus can be encoded via abstraction elimination into the SKI calculus as binary trees whose leaves are one of the three symbols S, K, and I (called combinators).

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 United States/Ohio 🔗 University of California

Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was an American mathematician known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory. He was a professor emeritus of mathematics and EECS at the University of California, Berkeley.

Berlekamp was the inventor of an algorithm to factor polynomials, and was one of the inventors of the Berlekamp–Welch algorithm and the Berlekamp–Massey algorithms, which are used to implement Reed–Solomon error correction.

Berlekamp had also been active in money management. In 1986, he began information-theoretic studies of commodity and financial futures.