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🔗 Geology

The Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC), also referred to as the Messinian Event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin.

Sediment samples from below the deep seafloor of the Mediterranean Sea, which include evaporite minerals, soils, and fossil plants, show that the precursor of the Strait of Gibraltar closed tight about 5.96 million years ago, sealing the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. This resulted in a period of partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea, the first of several such periods during the late Miocene. After the strait closed for the last time around 5.6 Ma, the region's generally dry climate at the time dried the Mediterranean basin out nearly completely within a thousand years. This massive desiccation left a deep dry basin, reaching 3 to 5 km (1.9 to 3.1 mi) deep below normal sea level, with a few hypersaline pockets similar to today's Dead Sea. Then, around 5.5 Ma, less dry climatic conditions resulted in the basin receiving more freshwater from rivers, progressively filling and diluting the hypersaline lakes into larger pockets of brackish water (much like today's Caspian Sea). The Messinian Salinity Crisis ended with the Strait of Gibraltar finally reopening 5.33 Ma, when the Atlantic rapidly filled up the Mediterranean basin in what is known as the Zanclean flood.

Even today, the Mediterranean is considerably saltier than the North Atlantic, owing to its near isolation by the Strait of Gibraltar and its high rate of evaporation. If the Strait of Gibraltar closes again (which is likely to happen in the near future on a geological time scale), the Mediterranean would mostly evaporate in about a thousand years, after which continued northward movement of Africa may obliterate the Mediterranean altogether.

Only the inflow of Atlantic water maintains the present Mediterranean level. When that was shut off sometime between 6.5 to 6 MYBP, net evaporative loss set in at the rate of around 3,300 cubic kilometers yearly. At that rate, the 3.7 million cubic kilometres of water in the basin would dry up in scarcely more than a thousand years, leaving an extensive layer of salt some tens of meters thick and raising global sea level about 12 meters.

🔗 Computing

Logic Theorist is a computer program written in 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon and Cliff Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to perform automated reasoning and is called "the first artificial intelligence program". It would eventually prove 38 of the first 52 theorems in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, and find new and more elegant proofs for some.

🔗 United States 🔗 Trains 🔗 United States/Ohio 🔗 Trains/Rapid transit 🔗 United States/Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Subway is a set of incomplete, derelict tunnels and stations for a rapid transit system beneath the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio. Although it is only a little over 2 miles in length, it is the largest abandoned subway tunnel system in the United States. Construction began in the early 1900s as an upgrade to the Cincinnati streetcar system, but was abandoned due to escalating costs, the collapse of funding amidst political bickering, and the Great Depression during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1928, the construction of the subway system in Cincinnati was indefinitely canceled. There are no plans to revive the project.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing

The Joy programming language in computer science is a purely functional programming language that was produced by Manfred von Thun of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Joy is based on composition of functions rather than lambda calculus. It has turned out to have many similarities to Forth, due not to design but to a sort of parallel evolution and convergence. It was also inspired by the function-level programming style of John Backus's FP.

🔗 Climate change 🔗 Oceans 🔗 Limnology and Oceanography

The ocean temperature varies by depth, geographical location and season. Both the temperature and salinity of ocean water differs. Warm surface water is generally saltier than the cooler deep or polar waters; in polar regions, the upper layers of ocean water are cold and fresh. Deep ocean water is cold, salty water found deep below the surface of Earth's oceans. This water has a very uniform temperature, around 0-3 °C. The ocean temperature also depends on the amount of solar radiation falling on its surface. In the tropics, with the Sun nearly overhead, the temperature of the surface layers can rise to over 30 °C (86 °F) while near the poles the temperature in equilibrium with the sea ice is about −2 °C (28 °F). There is a continuous circulation of water in the oceans. Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. Warm surface currents cool as they move away from the tropics, and the water becomes denser and sinks. The cold water moves back towards the equator as a deep sea current, driven by changes in the temperature and density of the water, before eventually welling up again towards the surface.

Ocean temperature as a term is used either for the temperature in the ocean at any depth, or specifically for the ocean temperatures that are not near the surface (in which case it is synonymous with "deep ocean temperature").

It is clear that the oceans are warming as a result of climate change and this rate of warming is increasing.^: 9 The upper ocean (above 700 m) is warming fastest, but the warming trend extends throughout the ocean. In 2022, the global ocean was the hottest ever recorded by humans.

🔗 Environment 🔗 London 🔗 History of Science

Fumifugium, or, The inconveniencie of the aer and smoak of London dissipated together with some remedies humbly proposed by J.E. esq. to His Sacred Majestie, and to the Parliament now assembled is a pamphlet published in London, 1661 (see 1661 in literature), by John Evelyn. It is one of the earliest known works on air pollution and is broken down into three parts which explain the problem, a proposed solution, and a way of improvement upon the air in London. The letter was specifically addressed to King Charles II of England and discussed problems with the capital's air pollution dating back to medieval times. Evelyn refers to Greek philosophers, who once believed that air was the principle of the earth and primary substance of the soul up until the time that air pollution began to cause ill health.

Evelyn was appointed to the newly formed Royal Society, and both Society and pamphlet are celebrated in the 1663 "Ballad of Gresham College". Stanza 23 (given here in modern English) describes how Evelyn

[...] shows that 'tis the sea-coal smoke

That always London does environ,
Which does our lungs and spirits choke,
Our hanging spoil, and rust our iron.
Let none at Fumifuge be scoffing

Who heard at Church our Sunday's coughing.

The sea-coal to which Evelyn referred was appropriately named because it came by sea from Newcastle. When burned, it gave off a terrible smell because of high amounts of sulfur in its composition. When burned the sea coal released sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitric oxide, soot, and particulates of organic matter into the atmosphere. The pamphlet suggests that burning wood, particularly aromatic woods, will be less harmful to the lungs and recommends relocating some of London's more polluting industries outside the capital, in particular lime-burning and brewing.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 LGBT studies 🔗 Novels/Short story

" '—All You Zombies—' " is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was written in one day, July 11, 1958, and first published in the March 1959 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine after being rejected by Playboy.

The story involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel. In 1980, it was nominated for the Balrog Award for short fiction.

"'—All You Zombies—'" further develops themes explored by the author in a previous work: "By His Bootstraps", published some 18 years earlier. Some of the same elements also appear later in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985), including the Circle of Ouroboros and the Temporal Corps.

The unusual title of the story, which includes both the quotation marks and dashes shown above, is a quotation from a sentence near the end of the story; the quotation is taken from the middle of the sentence, hence the dashes indicating edited text before and after the title.

🔗 Musical Instruments 🔗 Electronic music

The Ondioline is an electronic keyboard instrument, invented in 1941 by the Frenchman Georges Jenny, and is a forerunner of today's synthesizers. It is sometimes called the "Jenny Ondioline."

The Ondioline is capable of creating a wide variety of sounds. Its keyboard has an unusual feature: it is suspended on special springs which makes it possible to introduce a natural vibrato if the player moves the keyboard (not the entire instrument) from side to side (laterally) with their playing hand. The result is an almost human-like vibrato that lends a wide range of expression to the Ondioline. The keyboard is also pressure-sensitive, and the instrument has a knee volume lever, as well.

🔗 Death 🔗 Lists 🔗 Invention

This is a list of inventors whose deaths were in some manner caused by or related to a product, process, procedure, or other innovation that they invented or designed.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 Greece 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 Greece/Athens

The Athens Charter (French: Charte d'Athènes, Greek: Χάρτα των Αθηνών) was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse (Radiant City) book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.

The Charter got its name from location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the S.S. Patris bound for Athens from Marseille. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: "Architects' Congress."

The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II.