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🔗 Greece 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Languages

The Greek language question (Greek: το γλωσσικό ζήτημα, to glossikó zítima) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.

🔗 Computer science

In computer science, a skip list is a data structure that allows ${\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}(\log n)}$ search complexity as well as ${\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}(\log n)}$ insertion complexity within an ordered sequence of ${\displaystyle n}$ elements. Thus it can get the best features of an array (for searching) while maintaining a linked list-like structure that allows insertion, which is not possible in an array. Fast search is made possible by maintaining a linked hierarchy of subsequences, with each successive subsequence skipping over fewer elements than the previous one (see the picture below on the right). Searching starts in the sparsest subsequence until two consecutive elements have been found, one smaller and one larger than or equal to the element searched for. Via the linked hierarchy, these two elements link to elements of the next sparsest subsequence, where searching is continued until finally we are searching in the full sequence. The elements that are skipped over may be chosen probabilistically or deterministically, with the former being more common.

🔗 Professional sound production

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.

🔗 Genetics 🔗 Amphibians and Reptiles

The fertile hybrids of European water frogs (genus Pelophylax) reproduce by hybridogenesis (hemiclonally). This means that during gametogenesis, they discard the genome of one of the parental species and produce gametes of the other parental species (containing a genome not recombined with the genome of the first parental species). The first parental genome is restored by fertilization of these gametes with gametes from the first species (sexual host). In all-hybrid populations of the edible frog Pelophylax kl. esculentus, however, triploid hybrids provide this missing genome.

Because half of the genome is transmitted to the next generation clonally (not excluded unrecombined intact genome), and only the other half sexually (recombined genome of the sexual host), the hybridogenesis is a hemiclonal mode of reproduction.

For example, the edible frog Pelophylax kl. esculentus (mostly RL genome), which is a hybridogenetic hybrid of the marsh frog P. ridibundus (RR) and the pool frog P. lessonae (LL), usually excludes the lessonae genome (L) and generates gametes of the P. ridibundus (R). In other words, edible frogs produce gametes of marsh frogs.

The hybrid populations are propagated, however, not by the above primary hybridisations, but predominantly by backcrosses with one of the parental species they coexist (live in sympatry) with (see below in the middle).

Since the hybridogenetic hybrids require another taxon as sexual host to reproduce, usually one of the parental species, they are called kleptons (with "kl." in scientific names).

There are three known hybridogenetic hybrids of the European water frogs:

• edible frog Pelophylax kl. esculentus (usually genotype RL):
  pool frog P. lessonae (LL) × P. ridibundus (RR)
• Graf's hybrid frog Pelophylax kl. grafi (PR):
  Perez's frog P. perezi (PP) × P. ridibundus (RR) or
  Perez's frog P. perezi (PP) × edible frog P. kl. esculentus (RE)
  (it is unclear which one crossing was the primary hybridisation)
• Italian edible frog Pelophylax kl. hispanicus (RB):
  Italian pool frog P. bergeri (BB) × P. ridibundus (RR)

🔗 Politics 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Holidays 🔗 Organized Labour

International Workers' Day, also called Labour Day in some countries and often referred to as May Day, is a celebration of labourers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labour movement and occurs every year on 1 May, or the first Monday in May.

Traditionally, 1 May is the date of the European spring festival of May Day. The International Workers Congress held in Paris in 1889 established the Second International for labor, socialist, and Marxist parties. It adopted a resolution for a "great international demonstration" in support of working-class demands for the eight-hour day. The date was chosen by the American Federation of Labor to commemorate a general strike in the United States, which had begun on 1 May 1886 and culminated in the Haymarket affair on 4 May. The demonstration subsequently became a yearly event. The 1904 Sixth Conference of the Second International, called on "all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace".

The 1st of May, or first Monday in May, is a national public holiday in many countries, in most cases known as "International Workers' Day" or a similar name. Some countries celebrate a Labour Day on other dates significant to them, such as the United States and Canada, which celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. In 1955, the Catholic Church dedicated 1 May to "Saint Joseph the Worker". Saint Joseph is the patron saint of workers and craftsmen, among others.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computer science 🔗 Science

A human-based computation game or game with a purpose (GWAP) is a human-based computation technique of outsourcing steps within a computational process to humans in an entertaining way (gamification).

Luis von Ahn first proposed the idea of "human algorithm games", or games with a purpose (GWAPs), in order to harness human time and energy for addressing problems that computers cannot yet tackle on their own. He believes that human intellect is an important resource and contribution to the enhancement of computer processing and human computer interaction. He argues that games constitute a general mechanism for using brainpower to solve open computational problems. In this technique, human brains are compared to processors in a distributed system, each performing a small task of a massive computation. However, humans require an incentive to become part of a collective computation. Online games are used as a means to encourage participation in the process.

The tasks presented in these games are usually trivial for humans, but difficult for computers. These tasks include labeling images, transcribing ancient texts, common sense or human experience based activities, and more. Human-based computation games motivate people through entertainment rather than an interest in solving computation problems. This makes GWAPs more appealing to a larger audience. GWAPs can be used to help build the semantic web, annotate and classify collected data, crowdsource general knowledge, and improving other general computer processes. GWAPs have a vast range of applications in variety of areas such as security, computer vision, Internet accessibility, adult content filtering, and Internet search. In applications such as these, games with a purpose have lowered the cost of annotating data and increased the level of human participation.

🔗 Fire Service 🔗 Forestry 🔗 Wildfire

Smokejumpers are specially trained wildland firefighters who provide an initial attack response on remote wildland fires. They are inserted at the site of the fire by parachute.

Smokejumpers are trained and experienced wildland firefighters. In addition to performing the initial attack on wildfires, they may also provide leadership for extended attacks on wildland fires. Shortly after smokejumpers touch ground, they are supplied by parachute with food, water, and firefighting tools, making them self-sufficient for 48 hours. Smokejumpers are usually on duty from early spring through late fall.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Indonesia 🔗 Southeast Asia 🔗 Malaysia 🔗 Southeast Asia/Brunei

Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok or having gone amok, also spelled amuck or amuk, from the Southeast Asian Austronesian languages (especially Malaysian and Indonesian), is "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior". The syndrome of "Amok" is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV TR). The phrase is often used in a less serious manner when describing something that is wildly out of control or causing a frenzy (e.g., a dog tearing up the living room furniture might be termed as "running amok").

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Russia 🔗 Military history 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 Death 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Netherlands 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Malaysia

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down on 17 July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 km (31 mi) from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage of the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km (25 mi) from the border. The shoot-down occurred in the War in Donbas in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels.

The responsibility for investigation was delegated to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and the Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT), who concluded that the airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. According to the JIT, the Buk that was used originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Federation and had been transported from Russia on the day of the crash, fired from a field in a rebel-controlled area and the launch system returned to Russia afterwards. The findings by the DSB and JIT are consistent with the earlier claims by American and German intelligence sources and claims by the Ukrainian government. On the basis of the JIT's conclusions, the governments of the Netherlands and Australia held Russia responsible for the deployment of the Buk installation and were pursuing legal routes as of May 2018. The Russian government denied involvement in the shooting down of the airplane, and its account of how the aircraft was shot down has varied over time. Coverage in Russian media has also differed from that in other countries.

This was Malaysia Airlines' second aircraft loss during 2014, after the disappearance of Flight 370 on 8 March, and is the deadliest airliner shoot-down incident to date.