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π Master suppression techniques
The master suppression techniques is a framework articulated in 1945 by the Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen. These techniques identified by Nissen are ways to indirectly suppress and humiliate opponents. In the late 1970s, the framework was popularized by Norwegian social psychologist Berit Γ s, who reduced Nissen's original nine means to five, and claimed this was a technique mostly used in the workplace by men against women. Master suppression techniques are defined as strategies of social manipulation by which a dominant group maintains such a position in an (established or unexposed) hierarchy. They are very prominent in Scandinavian scholarly and public debate, where the expression is also used to refer to types of social manipulation not part of Γ s's framework. Master suppression techniques are sometimes called domination techniques.
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- "Master suppression techniques" | 2025-01-01 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Katarina Vilioni
Katarina Vilioni (died 1342) was one of the first Europeans known to have resided in China. She was apparently a member of a Genoese trading family that lived in Yangzhou during the mid-14th century.
Vilioni is known through her tombstone, which was rediscovered at Yangzhou in 1951. It suggests that Vilioni died in 1342 and was the daughter of a man named Domenico Vilioni.
π The inventor of microfleece refused to patent it.
Polar fleece is a soft napped insulating fabric made from polyester.
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- "The inventor of microfleece refused to patent it." | 2010-10-16 | 81 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Albino Redwood
An albino redwood is a redwood tree which is unable to produce chlorophyll, and has white needles instead of the normal green. It survives by obtaining sugar through the connections between its roots and those of neighboring normal redwood(s), usually the parent tree from whose base it has sprouted. Sap exchange through roots is a general phenomenon among redwoods. About 400 are known. They can be found in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Huddart Park, and The Santa Lucia Preserve, with eleven trees in the first. The exact locations are not publicized to protect the rare trees. They reach a maximum height of about 20Β m (66Β ft). Other conifers lack the ability to graft their roots, so 'albino' mutants of other species do not survive to become sizable trees.
The trees were important to Native Americans and were recorded in their legends. For example, the Pomo people used them in their cleansing ceremonies.
Albino redwoods are generally regarded as parasitic plants, but as of 2016 one researcher speculates that they are supported by other trees for their role in storing toxic heavy metals. Albinos apparently accumulate more metals than normal trees because of defective stomata, which cause them to lose more water through transpiration, forcing them to compensate by taking up more water through their roots.
Six phenotypes of albino redwood have been classified: white, bright yellow, cellular virescent green, pale green, mottled and nonchimeric variegated. Such mutants can be either basal (growing from a burl at the base of a tree) or aerial (branching off from a tree above the ground). The bright yellow form is exclusively aerial and is thought to be associated with excess xanthophyll production. The pale green form lacks just one specific type of chlorophyll and is almost always basal. Cellular virescent green trees have a few normal cells (whose abundance may vary over time) interspersed among the mutant cells.
Ten cases are known of chimeric redwoods that have a mosaic of albino and normal tissues. Only a single chimeric redwood is known to produce cones. Formerly threatened by the SonomaβMarin Area Rail Transit rail development, it has since been replanted.
Three phenotypes of chimeric redwoods have been noted: sectorial, mericlinal and periclinal. In sectorial mutants, albino cells are present vertically through all cell layers, with genotype boundaries usually parallel to the stem. Mericlinal trees have mutant cells in only some cell layers and have an unstable phenotype; the albino cells can disappear and reappear in successive years. A periclinal chimera has both mutant and normal cells distributed horizontally across the tip of each bud propagating at equal rates, leading to a very stable phenotype.
π Shunting-yard algorithm
In computer science, the shunting-yard algorithm is a method for parsing mathematical expressions specified in infix notation. It can produce either a postfix notation string, also known as Reverse Polish notation (RPN), or an abstract syntax tree (AST). The algorithm was invented by Edsger Dijkstra and named the "shunting yard" algorithm because its operation resembles that of a railroad shunting yard. Dijkstra first described the Shunting Yard Algorithm in the Mathematisch Centrum report MR 34/61.
Like the evaluation of RPN, the shunting yard algorithm is stack-based. Infix expressions are the form of mathematical notation most people are used to, for instance "3 + 4" or "3 + 4 Γ (2 β 1)". For the conversion there are two text variables (strings), the input and the output. There is also a stack that holds operators not yet added to the output queue. To convert, the program reads each symbol in order and does something based on that symbol. The result for the above examples would be (in Reverse Polish notation) "3 4 +" and "3 4 2 1 β Γ +", respectively.
The shunting-yard algorithm was later generalized into operator-precedence parsing.
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- "Shunting-yard algorithm" | 2019-02-18 | 75 Upvotes 26 Comments
π World's largest functioning musical instrument: Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world, based on the number of playing pipes, the number of ranks and its weight. The Wanamaker Organ is located within a spacious 7-story Grand Court at the John Wanamaker Store (originally Wanamaker's and most recently Macy's) and was played twice a day Monday through Saturday. The organ was featured at several special concerts held throughout the year, including events featuring the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Festival Chorus and Brass Ensemble.
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- "World's largest functioning musical instrument: Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia" | 2025-12-28 | 84 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Karatsuba Algorithm
The Karatsuba algorithm is a fast multiplication algorithm. It was discovered by Anatoly Karatsuba in 1960 and published in 1962. It reduces the multiplication of two n-digit numbers to at most single-digit multiplications in general (and exactly when n is a power of 2). It is therefore faster than the classical algorithm, which requires single-digit products. For example, the Karatsuba algorithm requires 310 = 59,049 single-digit multiplications to multiply two 1024-digit numbers (n = 1024 = 210), whereas the classical algorithm requires (210)2 = 1,048,576 (a speedup of 17.75 times).
The Karatsuba algorithm was the first multiplication algorithm asymptotically faster than the quadratic "grade school" algorithm. The ToomβCook algorithm (1963) is a faster generalization of Karatsuba's method, and the SchΓΆnhageβStrassen algorithm (1971) is even faster, for sufficiently large n.
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- "Karatsuba Algorithm" | 2019-10-03 | 170 Upvotes 27 Comments
π Thomas Stevens (Cyclist)
Thomas Stevens (24 December 1854 β 24 January 1935) was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle. He rode a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, from April 1884 to December 1886. He later searched for Henry Morton Stanley in Africa, investigated the claims of Indian ascetics and became manager of the Garrick Theatre in London.
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- "Thomas Stevens (Cyclist)" | 2024-02-03 | 42 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Olestra
Olestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute that adds no calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby lowering or eliminating their fat content. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) originally approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996, concluding that such use "meets the safety standard for food additives, reasonable certainty of no harm".:β46399β In the late 2000s, olestra lost its popularity due to supposed side effects and has been largely phased out, but products containing the ingredient can still be purchased at grocery stores in some countries. As of 2023, no products are sold in the United States using Olestra.
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- "Olestra" | 2024-01-06 | 11 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Processed Pizza Cheeses
Pizza cheese encompasses several varieties and types of cheeses and dairy products that are designed and manufactured for use specifically on pizza. These include processed and modified cheese such as mozzarella-like processed cheeses and mozzarella variants. The term can also refer to any type of cheese suitable for use on pizza. The most popular cheeses used in the preparation of pizza are mozzarella (accounting for about 30%), provolone, cheddar and Parmesan. Emmental, Romano and ricotta are often used as toppings, and processed pizza cheeses manufactured specifically for pizza are mass-produced. Some mass-produced pizza cheeses are frozen after manufacturing and shipped frozen.
Processed pizza cheese is manufactured to produce optimal qualities in browning, melting, stretchiness and fat and moisture content. Several studies and experiments have analyzed the impact of vegetable oil, manufacturing and culture processes, denatured whey proteins and other changes to create ideal and economical pizza cheeses. In 1997, it was estimated that annual production of pizza cheese products was 2 billion pounds in the United States and 200 million pounds in Europe, and in 2000 demand for the product in Europe was increasing by 8% per year. The trend of steadily-increasing production and consumption of mozzarella and pizza cheese continued into the first decade of the 21st century in the United States.
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- "Processed Pizza Cheeses" | 2021-05-15 | 14 Upvotes 5 Comments