Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Human rights 🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Espionage 🔗 United States/FBI

Main Core is the code name of an American governmental database that is believed to have been in existence since the 1980s. It is believed that Main Core is a federal database containing personal and financial data of millions of United States citizens believed to be threats to national security.

A milk watcher, milk saver, pot watcher, pot minder, milk guard, or boil over preventer is a cooking utensil placed at the bottom of a pot to prevent the foaming boil-over of liquids by collecting small bubbles of steam into one large bubble.

Contrafreeloading is an observed behavior in which an organism, when offered a choice between provided food or food that requires effort to obtain, prefers the food that requires effort.

The term was coined in 1963 by animal psychologist Glen Jensen. In his original study, around 200 rats were given a choice between food in a bowl and a food dispenser which required that the rat step on the pedal a set number of times. In this experiment, Jensen found that the rats chose the foot pedal option as a function of the number of foot presses required to receive the food reward. Similar studies by Jensen and other researchers have since replicated his findings with gerbils and other animals including canines, mice, rats, birds, fish, monkeys and chimpanzees. The only animal that did not display similar behavior was the domesticated cat, which preferred to be served.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment

@dril is a pseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style of absurdist humor and non sequiturs. The account, its author, and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to as dril (the handle without the at sign) or wint (the account's display name), both rendered lowercase but often capitalized by others. Since his first tweet in 2008, dril has become a popular and influential Twitter user with more than one million followers.

dril is one of the most notable accounts associated with "Weird Twitter", a subculture on the site that shares a surreal, ironic sense of humor. The character associated with dril is highly distinctive, often described as a bizarre reflection of a typical male American Internet user. Other social media users have repurposed dril's tweets for humorous or satiric effect in a variety of political and cultural contexts. Many of dril's tweets, phrases, and tropes have become familiar parts of Internet slang.

The author behind dril remained unknown for years, with the few available details about the author's life fueling speculation about his identity. In 2017, dril's author was "doxxed" (in other words, his identity was exposed) in a post that went viral and received media attention. After the doxxing, many Twitter users and journalists preferred to preserve dril's pseudonymity out of respect for the author's personal privacy and the character's mystique.

Beyond tweeting, dril has created animated short films and contributed illustrations and writing to other artists' collaborative projects. His first book, Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection (2018), is a compilation of the account's "greatest hits" alongside new illustrations. In 2019 he announced the launch of a streaming web series called Truthpoint: Darkweb Rising, an InfoWars parody co-created with comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen for Adult Swim. Writers have praised dril for the originality and humor of his tweets; for example, the poet Patricia Lockwood called dril "a master of tone [and] character," and The A.V. Club dubbed him "arguably the most iconic Twitter account in the history of social media."

🔗 Biography 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Hungary 🔗 Medicine/Society and Medicine

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (German: [ˈɪɡnaːts ˈzɛml̩vaɪs]; Hungarian: Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp [ˈsɛmmɛlvɛjs ˈiɡnaːts ˈfyløp]; 1 July 1818 – 13 August 1865) was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures and was described as the "saviour of mothers". Postpartum infection, also known as puerperal fever or childbed fever, consists of any bacterial infection of the reproductive tract following birth and in the 19th century was common and often fatal. Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers in obstetrical clinics to disinfect their hands. In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had thrice the mortality of midwives' wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861.

Despite his research, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.

His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, giving Semmelweis' observations a theoretical explanation, and Joseph Lister, acting on Pasteur's research, practised and operated using hygienic methods with great success.

🔗 Computer science

In computer science, higher-order abstract syntax (abbreviated HOAS) is a technique for the representation of abstract syntax trees for languages with variable binders.

🔗 Computing

In laptop computing, the XJACK is a type of extendable connector or antenna for a type II PC card, designed by the Megahertz subsidiary of 3Com. When not in use, the XJACK retracts into the PC card for storage.

The XJACK was originally used in modem and network cards, to attach a standard RJ11 or 8P8C plug directly to the PC card. They do not require a separate dongle, which could be lost or misplaced, and do not need to be removed from the laptop when travelling. An alternative approach is to use larger type III cards with a regular modular connector socket, but this approach requires more space.

Wi-Fi PC cards for accessing wireless networks have an external portion containing the antenna for improved reception (as compared with inside the laptop), but this portion of the card may be accidentally damaged while moving the laptop. 3Com manufactured wireless cards with retractable antenna portions, also under the XJACK name. Other companies have since manufactured wireless cards with retractable antennas.

🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Medicine 🔗 China 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Medicine/Toxicology 🔗 Taiwan

Gutter oil (Chinese: 地沟油; pinyin: dìgōu yóu, or 餿水油; sōushuǐ yóu) is oil which has been recycled from waste oil collected from sources such as restaurant fryers, grease traps, slaughterhouse waste and fatbergs.

Reprocessing of used cooking oil is often very rudimentary; techniques include filtration, boiling, refining, and the removal of some adulterants. It is then packaged and resold as a cheaper alternative to normal cooking oil. Another version of gutter oil uses discarded animal parts, animal fat and skins, internal organs, and expired or otherwise low-quality meat, which is then cooked in large vats in order to extract the oil. Used kitchen oil can be purchased for between $859 and $937 per ton, while the cleaned and refined product can sell for $1,560 per ton. Thus there is great economic incentive to produce and sell gutter oil.

It was estimated in 2011 that up to one in every ten lower-market restaurant meals consumed in China is prepared with recycled oil. As Feng Ping of the China Meat Research Center has said: "The illegal oil shows no difference in appearance and indicators after refining and purification because the law breakers are skillful at coping with the established standards."

Some street vendors and restaurants in China and Taiwan have illegally used recycled oil unfit for human consumption for the purposes of cooking food, leading to a crackdown against such establishments by the Chinese and Taiwanese governments.

Gutter oil is an acceptable raw ingredient for products that are not for human consumption, such as soap, rubber, bio-fuel, and cosmetics.

🔗 Systems 🔗 Robotics 🔗 Systems/Cybernetics

The Johns Hopkins Beast was a mobile automaton, an early pre-robot, built in the 1960s at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The machine had a rudimentary intelligence and the ability to survive on its own. As it wandered through the white halls of the laboratory, it would seek black wall outlets. When it found one it would plug in and recharge.

The robot was cybernetic. It did not use a computer. Its control circuitry consisted of dozens of transistors controlling analog voltages. It used photocell optics and sonar to navigate. The 2N404 transistors were used to create NOR logic gates that implemented the Boolean logic to tell it what to do when a specific sensor was activated. The 2N404 transistors were also used to create timing gates to tell it how long to do something. 2N1040 Power transistors were used to control the power to the motion treads, the boom, and the charging mechanism.

The original sensors in Mod I were physical touch only. The wall socket was detected by physical switches on the arm that followed the wall. Once detected, two electrical prongs were extended until they entered the wall socket and made the electrical connection to charge the vehicle. The stairway, doors, and pipes on the hall wall were also detected by physical switches and recognized by appropriate logic.

The sonar guidance system was developed for Mod I and improved for Mod II. It used two ultrasonic transducers to determine distance, location within the halls, and obstructions in its path. This provided "The Beast" with bat-like guidance. At this point, it could detect obstructions in the hallway, such as people in the hallway. Once an obstruction was detected, the Beast would slow down and then decide whether to stop or divert around the obstruction. It could also ultrasonically recognize the stairway and doorways to take appropriate action.

An optical guidance system was added to Mod II. This provided, among other capabilities, the ability to optically identify the black wall sockets that contrasted with the white wall.

The Hopkins Beast Autonomous Robot Mod II link below was written by Dr. Ronald McConnell, at that time a co-op student and one of the designers for Mod II.