Random Articles (Page 3)
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๐ Gameframe
A gameframe is a hybrid computer system that was first used in the online video game industry. It is an amalgamation of the different technologies and architectures for supercomputers and mainframes, namely high computing power and high throughput.
๐ Ten Percent of the Brain Myth
The 10 percent of the brain myth asserts that humans generally use only 10 percent (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to many celebrated people, notably Albert Einstein. By extrapolation, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.
Changes in grey and white matter following new experiences and learning have been shown, but it has not yet been proven what the changes are. The popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests in folklore and not science. Though specific mechanisms regarding brain function remain to be fully describedโe.g. memory, consciousnessโthe physiology of brain mapping suggests that all areas of the brain have a function and that they are used nearly all the time.
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- "Ten Percent of the Brain Myth" | 2022-07-12 | 113 Upvotes 128 Comments
๐ Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine were a group of 19th-century lumberjacks who exhibited a rare disorder of unknown origin. The syndrome entails an exaggerated startle reflex which may be described as an uncontrollable "jump"; individuals with this condition can exhibit sudden movements in all parts of the body. Jumping Frenchmen syndrome shares some symptoms with other startle disorders.
Individuals with this condition were first found in the Moosehead Lake region of Maine, and were first described by George Miller Beard in 1878.
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- "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine" | 2021-04-18 | 86 Upvotes 30 Comments
๐ Daughter from California Syndrome
"Daughter from California" syndrome is a phrase used in the medical profession to describe a situation in which a long-lost relative arrives at the hospital at which a dying elderly relative is being treated, and insists that the medical team pursue aggressive measures to prolong the patient's life, or otherwise challenges the care the patient is being given. In his 2015 book The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care, American doctor Angelo Volandes ascribes this to "guilt and denial," "not necessarily what is best for the patient."
The "daughter from California" is often described as angry, articulate and informed.
Medical professionals say that because the "daughter from California" has been absent from the life and care of the elderly patient, they are frequently surprised by the scale of the patient's deterioration, and may have unrealistic expectations about what is medically feasible. They may feel guilty about having been absent, and may therefore feel motivated to reassert their role as an involved caregiver.
The phrase was first documented by a collective of gerontologists in a 1991 case report published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, titled "Decision Making in the Incompetent Elderly: 'The Daughter from California Syndrome'". In the paper, Molloy and colleagues presented strategies intended to help medical staff deal with the difficult family members of mentally incompetent patients.
In California, the "daughter from California" is known as the "daughter from New York".
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- "Daughter from California Syndrome" | 2024-06-21 | 25 Upvotes 18 Comments
- "Daughter from California Syndrome" | 2021-04-17 | 36 Upvotes 26 Comments
๐ ChandraโToueg consensus algorithm
The ChandraโToueg consensus algorithm, published by Tushar Deepak Chandra and Sam Toueg in 1996, is an algorithm for solving consensus in a network of unreliable processes equipped with an eventually strong failure detector. The failure detector is an abstract version of timeouts; it signals to each process when other processes may have crashed. An eventually strong failure detector is one that never identifies some specific non-faulty process as having failed after some initial period of confusion, and, at the same time, eventually identifies all faulty processes as failed (where a faulty process is a process which eventually fails or crashes and a non-faulty process never fails). The ChandraโToueg consensus algorithm assumes that the number of faulty processes, denoted by f, is less than n/2 (i.e. the minority), i.e. it assumes f < n/2, where n is the total number of processes.
๐ L-System
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.
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- "L-System" | 2020-12-17 | 112 Upvotes 17 Comments
๐ Weird Number
In number theory, a weird number is a natural number that is abundant but not semiperfect.
In other words, the sum of the proper divisors (divisors including 1 but not itself) of the number is greater than the number, but no subset of those divisors sums to the number itself.
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- "Weird Number" | 2019-11-12 | 70 Upvotes 28 Comments
๐ Al Pastor
Al pastor (from Spanish, "shepherd style"), tacos al pastor, or tacos de trompo is a preparation of spit-grilled slices of pork originating in the Central Mexican region of Puebla and Mexico City, although today it is a common menu item found in taquerรญas throughout Mexico. The method of preparing and cooking al pastor is based on the lamb shawarma brought by Lebanese immigrants to the region. Al pastor features a flavor palate that uses traditional Mexican adobada (marinade). It is a popular street food that has spread to the United States. In some places of northern Mexico and coastal Mexico, such as in Baja California, taco al pastor is known as taco de trompo or taco de adobada. A similar dish also from Puebla that uses a combination of middle eastern spices and indigenous central Mexican ingredients is called tacos รกrabes.
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- "Al Pastor" | 2023-04-16 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs
This is a list of the longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs.
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- "Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs" | 2023-08-04 | 85 Upvotes 93 Comments
๐ Against Method
Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book about the philosophy of science by Paul Feyerabend, in which the author argues that science is an anarchic enterprise, not a nomic (customary) one. In the context of this work, the term anarchy refers to epistemological anarchy.
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- "Against Method" | 2022-12-22 | 134 Upvotes 64 Comments
- "Against Method" | 2015-09-27 | 133 Upvotes 59 Comments