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🔗 China 🔗 Central Asia 🔗 Languages

The Tocharian (sometimes Tokharian) languages ( or ), also known as Arśi-Kuči, Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. The languages are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in oasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (now part of Xinjiang in Northwest China) and the Lop Desert. The discovery of these languages in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family as centum and satem languages, and prompted reinvigorated study of the Indo-European family. Scholars studying these manuscripts in the early 20th century identified their authors with the Tokharoi, a name used in ancient sources for people of Bactria (Tokharistan). Although this identification is now believed to be mistaken, "Tocharian" remains the usual term for these languages.

The discovered manuscripts record two closely related languages, called Tocharian A (also East Tocharian, Agnean or Turfanian) and Tocharian B (West Tocharian or Kuchean). The subject matter of the texts suggests that Tocharian A was more archaic and used as a Buddhist liturgical language, while Tocharian B was more actively spoken in the entire area from Turfan in the east to Tumshuq in the west. A body of loanwords and names found in Prakrit documents from the Lop Nor basin have been dubbed Tocharian C (Kroränian). A claimed find of ten Tocharian C texts written in Kharoṣṭhī script has been discredited.

The oldest extant manuscripts in Tocharian B are now dated to the 5th or even late 4th century AD, making Tocharian a language of Late Antiquity contemporary with Gothic, Classical Armenian, and Primitive Irish.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Systems 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Systems/Software engineering

Capability Immaturity Model (CIMM) in software engineering is a parody acronym, a semi-serious effort to provide a contrast to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The Capability Maturity Model is a five point scale of capability in an organization, ranging from random processes at level 1 to fully defined, managed and optimized processes at level 5. The ability of an organization to carry out its mission on time and within budget is claimed to improve as the CMM level increases.

The "Capability Im-Maturity Model" asserts that organizations can and do occupy levels below CMM level 1. An original article by Capt. Tom Schorsch USAF as part of a graduate project at the Air Force Institute of Technology provides the definitions for CIMM. He cites Prof. Anthony Finkelstein's ACM paper as an inspiration. The article describes situations that arise in dysfunctional organizations. Such situations are reportedly common in organizations of all kinds undertaking software development, i.e. they are really characterizations of the management of specific projects, since they can occur even in organizations with positive CMM levels.

Kik Piney, citing the original authors, later adapted the model to a somewhat satirical version that attracted a number of followers who felt that it was quite true to their experience.

🔗 Computer science 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Systems 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Systems/Operations research

The knapsack problem is a problem in combinatorial optimization: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as large as possible. It derives its name from the problem faced by someone who is constrained by a fixed-size knapsack and must fill it with the most valuable items. The problem often arises in resource allocation where the decision makers have to choose from a set of non-divisible projects or tasks under a fixed budget or time constraint, respectively.

The knapsack problem has been studied for more than a century, with early works dating as far back as 1897. The name "knapsack problem" dates back to the early works of mathematician Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956), and refers to the commonplace problem of packing the most valuable or useful items without overloading the luggage.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/World War I 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Birds 🔗 Photography 🔗 Photography/History of photography 🔗 Military history/European military history

Pigeon photography is an aerial photography technique invented in 1907 by the German apothecary Julius Neubronner, who also used pigeons to deliver medications. A homing pigeon was fitted with an aluminium breast harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera could be attached. Neubronner's German patent application was initially rejected, but was granted in December 1908 after he produced authenticated photographs taken by his pigeons. He publicized the technique at the 1909 Dresden International Photographic Exhibition, and sold some images as postcards at the Frankfurt International Aviation Exhibition and at the 1910 and 1911 Paris Air Shows.

Initially, the military potential of pigeon photography for aerial reconnaissance appeared interesting. Battlefield tests in World War I provided encouraging results, but the ancillary technology of mobile dovecotes for messenger pigeons had the greatest impact. Owing to the rapid perfection of aviation during the war, military interest in pigeon photography faded and Neubronner abandoned his experiments. The idea was briefly resurrected in the 1930s by a Swiss clockmaker, and reportedly also by the German and French militaries. Although war pigeons were deployed extensively during World War II, it is unclear to what extent, if any, birds were involved in aerial reconnaissance. The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later developed a battery-powered camera designed for espionage pigeon photography; details of its use remain classified.

The construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer mechanism, and the training and handling of the birds to carry the necessary loads, presented major challenges, as did the limited control over the pigeons' position, orientation and speed when the photographs were being taken. In 2004, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) used miniature television cameras attached to falcons and goshawks to obtain live footage, and today some researchers, enthusiasts and artists similarly deploy crittercams with various species of animals.

🔗 Physics

Flux pinning is the phenomenon where a superconductor is pinned in space above a magnet. The superconductor must be a type-II superconductor because type-I superconductors cannot be penetrated by magnetic fields. The act of magnetic penetration is what makes flux pinning possible. At higher magnetic fields (above Hc1 and below Hc2) the superconductor allows magnetic flux to enter in quantized packets surrounded by a superconducting current vortex (see Quantum vortex). These sites of penetration are known as flux tubes. The number of flux tubes per unit area is proportional to the magnetic field with a constant of proportionality equal to the magnetic flux quantum. On a simple 76 millimeter diameter, 1-micrometer thick disk, next to a magnetic field of 28 kA/m, there are approximately 100 billion flux tubes that hold 70,000 times the superconductor's weight. At lower temperatures the flux tubes are pinned in place and cannot move. This pinning is what holds the superconductor in place thereby allowing it to levitate. This phenomenon is closely related to the Meissner effect, though with one crucial difference — the Meissner effect shields the superconductor from all magnetic fields causing repulsion, unlike the pinned state of the superconductor disk which pins flux, and the superconductor in place.

🔗 Norway 🔗 Paranormal

The Hessdalen lights are unidentified lights which have been observed in a 12-kilometre-long (7.5 mi) stretch of the Hessdalen valley in rural central Norway periodically since at least the 1930s.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Statistics 🔗 Military history/Intelligence 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/European military history

In the statistical theory of estimation, the German tank problem consists of estimating the maximum of a discrete uniform distribution from sampling without replacement. In simple terms, suppose we have an unknown number of items which are sequentially numbered from 1 to N. We take a random sample of these items and observe their sequence numbers; the problem is to estimate N from these observed numbers.

The problem can be approached using either frequentist inference or Bayesian inference, leading to different results. Estimating the population maximum based on a single sample yields divergent results, whereas estimation based on multiple samples is a practical estimation question whose answer is simple (especially in the frequentist setting) but not obvious (especially in the Bayesian setting).

The problem is named after its historical application by Allied forces in World War II to the estimation of the monthly rate of German tank production from very few data. This exploited the manufacturing practice of assigning and attaching ascending sequences of serial numbers to tank components (chassis, gearbox, engine, wheels), with some of the tanks eventually being captured in battle by Allied forces.

🔗 International relations 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Death

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is a disease epidemic that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected people is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu.

Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death (also known as The Plague), which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. Other notable pandemics include the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1). Current pandemics include HIV/AIDS and the 2019 coronavirus disease, which was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO).

🔗 Technology 🔗 Energy

In pipeline transportation, pigging is the practice of using devices known as pigs or scrapers to perform various maintenance operations. This is done without stopping the flow of the product in the pipeline. These devices are known as pigs because they scrape or clean just like a normal pig.

These operations include but are not limited to cleaning and inspecting the pipeline. This is accomplished by inserting the pig into a "pig launcher" (or "launching station") — an oversized section in the pipeline, reducing to the normal diameter. The launching station is then closed and the pressure-driven flow of the product in the pipeline is used to push the pig along down the pipe until it reaches the receiving trap — the "pig catcher" (or "receiving station").

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

Squirrel is a high level imperative, object-oriented programming language, designed to be a lightweight scripting language that fits in the size, memory bandwidth, and real-time requirements of applications like video games.

MirthKit, a simple toolkit for making and distributing open source, cross-platform 2D games, uses Squirrel for its platform. It is used extensively by Code::Blocks for scripting and was also used in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. It is also used in Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 and Thimbleweed Park for scripted events and in NewDark, an unofficial Thief 2: The Metal Age engine update, to facilitate additional, simplified means of scripting mission events, aside of the regular C scripting.