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🔗 Computing

Malbolge () is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge.

Malbolge was specifically designed to be almost impossible to use, via a counter-intuitive 'crazy operation', base-three arithmetic, and self-altering code. It builds on the difficulty of earlier, challenging esoteric languages (such as Brainfuck and Befunge), but takes this aspect to the extreme, playing on the entangled histories of computer science and encryption. Despite this design, it is possible (though very difficult) to write useful Malbolge programs.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Pritzker Military Library 🔗 Firearms

The M-28 or M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System was the tactical nuclear recoilless gun (smoothbore) for firing the M-388 nuclear projectile that was deployed by the United States during the Cold War. It was one of the smallest nuclear weapon systems ever built, with a yield between 10 and 20 tons TNT equivalent (40–80 gigajoules). It is named after American folk hero, soldier, and congressman Davy Crockett.

The photophone is a telecommunications device that allows transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 L Street in Washington, D.C. Both were later to become full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association, created and financed by Bell.

On June 3, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message from the roof of the Franklin School to the window of Bell's laboratory, some 213 meters (about 700 ft.) away.

Bell believed the photophone was his most important invention. Of the 18 patents granted in Bell's name alone, and the 12 he shared with his collaborators, four were for the photophone, which Bell referred to as his "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone".

The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems that achieved worldwide popular usage starting in the 1980s. The master patent for the photophone (U.S. Patent 235,199 Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone) was issued in December 1880, many decades before its principles came to have practical applications.

🔗 Education

Underwater basket weaving is an idiom referring pejoratively to supposedly useless or absurd college or university courses and often generally to refer to a perceived decline in educational standards.

The term also serves as an intentionally humorous generic answer to questions about an academic degree. It is also used to humorously refer to any non-academic elective course, specifically one that does not count towards any graduation requirements.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Energy

This article lists notable military accidents involving nuclear material. Civilian accidents are listed at List of civilian nuclear accidents. For a general discussion of both civilian and military accidents, see nuclear and radiation accidents. For other lists, see Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents.

🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

Deep operation (Russian: Глубокая операция, glubokaya operatsiya), also known as Soviet Deep Battle, was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a tenet that emphasized destroying, suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact, but throughout the depth of the battlefield.

The term comes from Vladimir Triandafillov, an influential military writer, who worked with others to create a military strategy with its own specialized operational art and tactics. The concept of deep operations was a national strategy, tailored to the economic, cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of several failures or defeats in the Russo-Japanese War, First World War and Polish–Soviet War, the Soviet High Command (Stavka) focused on developing new methods for the conduct of war. This new approach considered military strategy and tactics, but also introduced a new intermediate level of military art: operations. The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish the third level of military thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics.

Using these templates, the Soviets developed the concept of deep battle and by 1936 it had become part of the Red Army Field Regulations. Deep operations had two phases: the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible—or, indeed, irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Death 🔗 Occupational Safety and Health 🔗 India 🔗 Medicine/Toxicology

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the small towns located near the plant.

Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. In 2008, the government of Madhya Pradesh had paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The cause of the disaster remains under debate. The Indian government and local activists argue that slack management and deferred maintenance created a situation where routine pipe maintenance caused a backflow of water into a MIC tank, triggering the disaster. Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) argues water entered the tank through an act of sabotage.

The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1989, UCC paid $470 million (equivalent to $845 million in 2018) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to Eveready Industries India Limited (EIIL), which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Eveready ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster.

Civil and criminal cases filed in the United States against UCC and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster, were dismissed and redirected to Indian courts on multiple occasions between 1986 and 2012, as the US courts focused on UCIL being a standalone entity of India. Civil and criminal cases were also filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC, UCIL and UCC CEO Anderson. In June 2010, seven Indian nationals who were UCIL employees in 1984, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. All were released on bail shortly after the verdict. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Game theory

The angel problem is a question in combinatorial game theory proposed by John Horton Conway. The game is commonly referred to as the Angels and Devils game. The game is played by two players called the angel and the devil. It is played on an infinite chessboard (or equivalently the points of a 2D lattice). The angel has a power k (a natural number 1 or higher), specified before the game starts. The board starts empty with the angel at the origin. On each turn, the angel jumps to a different empty square which could be reached by at most k moves of a chess king, i.e. the distance from the starting square is at most k in the infinity norm. The devil, on its turn, may add a block on any single square not containing the angel. The angel may leap over blocked squares, but cannot land on them. The devil wins if the angel is unable to move. The angel wins by surviving indefinitely.

The angel problem is: can an angel with high enough power win?

There must exist a winning strategy for one of the players. If the devil can force a win then it can do so in a finite number of moves. If the devil cannot force a win then there is always an action that the angel can take to avoid losing and a winning strategy for it is always to pick such a move. More abstractly, the "pay-off set" (i.e., the set of all plays in which the angel wins) is a closed set (in the natural topology on the set of all plays), and it is known that such games are determined. Of course, for any infinite game, if player 2 doesn't have a winning strategy, player 1 can always pick a move that leads to a position where player 2 doesn't have a winning strategy, but in some games, simply playing forever doesn't confer a win to player 1, and that's why undetermined games may exist.

Conway offered a reward for a general solution to this problem ($100 for a winning strategy for an angel of sufficiently high power, and $1000 for a proof that the devil can win irrespective of the angel's power). Progress was made first in higher dimensions. In late 2006, the original problem was solved when independent proofs appeared, showing that an angel can win. Bowditch proved that a 4-angel (that is, an angel with power k=4) can win and Máthé and Kloster gave proofs that a 2-angel can win. At this stage, it has not been confirmed by Conway who is to be the recipient of his prize offer, or whether each published and subsequent solution will also earn $100 US.

🔗 China 🔗 Ethnic groups 🔗 Gender Studies

The Mosuo (Chinese: 摩梭; pinyin: Mósuō) are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet. Dubbed the 'Kingdom of Women' by the Chinese, the Mosuo population of about 50,000 live near Lugu Lake in the Tibetan Himalayas 27°42′35.30″N 100°47′4.04″E.

Scholars use diverse terms and spellings to designate the Mosuo culture. Most prefer 'Mosuo' some spell it 'Moso', while a minority use neither term, but refer to them as the Na people.

The Mosuo people are known as the 'Kingdom of Women' because the Na are a matrilineal society: heterosexual activity occurs only by mutual consent and mostly through the custom of the secret nocturnal 'visit'; men and women are free to have multiple partners, and to initiate or break off relationships when they please.

🔗 Biography 🔗 AIDS

Robert Rayford (February 3, 1953 – May 15 or 16, 1969), sometimes identified as Robert R. due to his age, was a teenager from Missouri who has been suggested to represent the earliest case of HIV/AIDS in North America based on evidence published in 1988 in which the authors claimed indicated he was "infected with a virus closely related or identical to human immunodeficiency virus type 1." Rayford died of pneumonia, but his other symptoms baffled the doctors who treated him. A study published in 1988 reported the detection of antibodies against HIV. Results of testing for HIV genetic material were reported once at a scientific conference in Australia in 1999; however, the data have never been published in a peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal.