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🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory

MOLLE (pronounced , similar in pronunciation to the name Molly) is an acronym for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment. It is used to define the current generation of load-bearing equipment and backpacks used by a number of NATO armed forces, especially the British Army and the United States Army.

The system's modularity is derived from the use of Pouch Attachment Ladder System (PALS) webbing equipment as rows of heavy-duty nylon stitched onto the vest to allow for the attachment of various compatible pouches and accessories. This method of attachment has become a de facto standard for modular tactical gear, replacing the All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment (ALICE) system used in the earliest modular vest systems (which is still in use with many police forces).

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 Military history/Fortifications 🔗 Civil engineering 🔗 Engineering

A bastion fort or trace italienne (a phrase improperly derived from French, literally meaning Italian outline), is a fortification in a style that evolved during the early modern period of gunpowder when the cannon came to dominate the battlefield. It was first seen in the mid-15th century in Italy. Some types, especially when combined with ravelins and other outworks, resembled the related star fort of the same era.

The design of the fort is normally a polygon with bastions at the corners of the walls. These outcroppings eliminated protected blind spots, called "dead zones", and allowed fire along the curtain from positions protected from direct fire. Many bastion forts also feature cavaliers, which are raised secondary structures based entirely inside the primary structure.

🔗 Computer science 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Systems

An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system and a type of formal grammar. An L-system consists of an alphabet of symbols that can be used to make strings, a collection of production rules that expand each symbol into some larger string of symbols, an initial "axiom" string from which to begin construction, and a mechanism for translating the generated strings into geometric structures. L-systems were introduced and developed in 1968 by Aristid Lindenmayer, a Hungarian theoretical biologist and botanist at the University of Utrecht. Lindenmayer used L-systems to describe the behaviour of plant cells and to model the growth processes of plant development. L-systems have also been used to model the morphology of a variety of organisms and can be used to generate self-similar fractals.

🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Rocketry

The Lockheed Martin X-33 was an uncrewed, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane developed in the 1990s under the U.S. government–funded Space Launch Initiative program. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was planned to be a next-generation, commercially operated reusable launch vehicle. The X-33 would flight-test a range of technologies that NASA believed it needed for single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles (SSTO RLVs), such as metallic thermal protection systems, composite cryogenic fuel tanks for liquid hydrogen, the aerospike engine, autonomous (uncrewed) flight control, rapid flight turn-around times through streamlined operations, and its lifting body aerodynamics.

Failures of its 21-meter wingspan and multi-lobed, composite-material fuel tank during pressure testing ultimately led to the withdrawal of federal support for the program in early 2001. Lockheed Martin has conducted unrelated testing, and has had a single success after a string of failures as recently as 2009 using a 2-meter scale model.

🔗 Japan 🔗 Jazz

Jazz kissa (Japanese: ジャズ喫茶), sometimes transliterated as jazu kissa, are cafés that specialise in the playing and appreciation of recorded jazz music. Unique to Japan, jazz kissa are spaces where jazz music is played for dedicated listening rather than as background music. A typical jazz kissa features a high-quality stereo system, a large music collection and dim lighting, and serves coffee and alcoholic drinks.

The first cafés focussed on playing recorded jazz opened in Japan in the late 1920s as part of a wider enthusiasm for Western culture and music. Before World War II there were about 80 jazz kissa, but during the war many of them closed. The post-war period saw jazz kissa return in even greater numbers. Jazz kissa served as places to hear imported jazz records that were too expensive for individuals to buy. They were an important musical resource for musicians, journalists and jazz enthusiasts, and, at their peak, there were around 600 jazz kissa operating across Japan.

Starting in the 1970s, easier and cheaper access to personal stereo equipment and jazz music challenged the role of the jazz kissa. Jazz kissa numbers greatly reduced and the remaining kissa were mainly visited for nostalgic reasons. However, jazz kissa continue to operate in Japan and new kissa are still being opened. Jazz kissa played a role in the reception of jazz music and modern Western culture in Japan. Their influence extends beyond Japan with listening bars inspired by jazz kissa opening in many other countries in the 21st century.

🔗 Books 🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Mythology

An Instinct for Dragons is a book by University of Central Florida anthropologist, David E. Jones, in which he seeks to explain the universality of dragon images in the folklore of human societies. In the introduction, Jones conducts a survey of dragon myths from cultures around the world and argues that certain aspects of dragons or dragon-like mythical creatures are found very widely. He claims that even the Inuit have a reptilian dragon-like monster, even though (living in a frigid environment unsuited for cold-blooded animals) they had never seen an actual reptile.

Jones then argues against the common hypothesis that dragon myths might be motivated by primitive discoveries of dinosaur fossils (he argues that there are widespread traits of dragons in folklore which are not observable from fossils), and claims that the common traits of dragons seem to be an amalgam of the principal predators of our ancestral hominids, which he names as the raptors, great cats (especially leopards) and pythons.

The hypothesis to which Jones conforms is that over millions of years of evolution, members of a species will evolve an instinctive fear of their predators, and he proposes ways in which these fearful images may be merged in artistic or cultural expression to create the dragon image and, perhaps, other kinds of hybrid monster.

Finally he suggests sociological reasons for why such images may be perceived differently at different stages of a culture to try to explain why Chinese dragons are considered basically good and representative of government, but the great majority (although not all) European dragons are evil and often represent chaos.

🔗 Cats 🔗 Ships 🔗 Rodents

The ship's cat has been a common feature on many trading, exploration, and naval ships dating to ancient times. Cats have been carried on ships for many reasons, most importantly to control rodents. Vermin aboard a ship can cause damage to ropes, woodwork, and more recently, electrical wiring. Also, rodents threaten ships' stores, devour crews' foodstuff, and could cause economic damage to ships' cargo such as grain. They are also a source of disease, which is dangerous for ships that are at sea for long periods of time. Rat fleas are carriers of plague, and rats on ships were believed to be a primary vector of the Black Death.

Cats naturally attack and kill rodents, and their natural ability to adapt to new surroundings made them suitable for service on a ship. In addition, they offer companionship and a sense of home, security and camaraderie to sailors away from home.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Aviation 🔗 France 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Brazil 🔗 Aviation/aerospace biography 🔗 Brazil/Education and Science in Brazil

Alberto Santos-Dumont (Brazilian Portuguese: [awˈbɛɾtu ˈsɐ̃tus duˈmõ]; 20 July 1873 – 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian inventor and aviation pioneer, one of the very few people to have contributed significantly to the development of both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air aircraft.

The heir of a wealthy family of coffee producers, Santos-Dumont dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life. In his early career he designed, built, and flew hot air balloons and early dirigibles, culminating in his winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize on 19 October 1901 for a flight that rounded the Eiffel Tower. He then turned to heavier-than-air machines, and on 23 October 1906 his 14-bis made the first powered heavier-than-air flight in Europe to be certified by the Aéro-Club de France and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. His conviction that aviation would usher in an era of worldwide peace and prosperity led him to freely publish his designs and forego patenting his various innovations.

Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical airplane. Countless roads, plazas, schools, monuments, and airports there are dedicated to him, and his name is inscribed on the Tancredo Neves Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1931 until his suicide in 1932.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

The transputer is a series of pioneering microprocessors from the 1980s, featuring integrated memory and serial communication links, intended for parallel computing. They were designed and produced by Inmos, a semiconductor company based in Bristol, United Kingdom.

For some time in the late 1980s, many considered the transputer to be the next great design for the future of computing. While Inmos and the transputer did not achieve this expectation, the transputer architecture was highly influential in provoking new ideas in computer architecture, several of which have re-emerged in different forms in modern systems.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Time 🔗 Linux

Unix time (also known as Epoch time, POSIX time, seconds since the Epoch, or UNIX Epoch time) is a system for describing a point in time. It is the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch, that is the time 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, minus leap seconds. Leap seconds are ignored, with a leap second having the same Unix time as the second before it, and every day is treated as if it contains exactly 86400 seconds. Due to this treatment, Unix time is not a true representation of UTC.

Unix time is widely used in operating systems and file formats. In Unix-like operating systems, date is a command which will print or set the current time; by default, it prints or sets the time in the system time zone, but with the -u flag, it prints or sets the time in UTC and, with the TZ environment variable set to refer to a particular time zone, prints or sets the time in that time zone.