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🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing

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.

🔗 United States 🔗 Espionage 🔗 Law Enforcement

LOVEINT is the practice of intelligence service employees making use of their extensive monitoring capabilities to spy on their love interest or spouse. The term was coined in resemblance to intelligence terminology such as SIGINT, COMINT or HUMINT.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Medicine/Neurology 🔗 Pharmacology 🔗 Medicine/Psychiatry 🔗 Epilepsy

Benzodiazepines (BZD, BDZ, BZs), colloquially called "benzos", are a class of depressant drugs whose core chemical structure is the fusion of a benzene ring and a diazepine ring. They are prescribed to treat conditions such as anxiety disorders, insomnia, and seizures. The first benzodiazepine, chlordiazepoxide (Librium), was discovered accidentally by Leo Sternbach in 1955 and was made available in 1960 by Hoffmann–La Roche, who soon followed with diazepam (Valium) in 1963. By 1977, benzodiazepines were the most prescribed medications globally; the introduction of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), among other factors, decreased rates of prescription, but they remain frequently used worldwide.

Benzodiazepines are depressants that enhance the effect of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) at the GABA_A receptor, resulting in sedative, hypnotic (sleep-inducing), anxiolytic (anti-anxiety), anticonvulsant, and muscle relaxant properties. High doses of many shorter-acting benzodiazepines may also cause anterograde amnesia and dissociation. These properties make benzodiazepines useful in treating anxiety, panic disorder, insomnia, agitation, seizures, muscle spasms, alcohol withdrawal and as a premedication for medical or dental procedures. Benzodiazepines are categorized as short, intermediate, or long-acting. Short- and intermediate-acting benzodiazepines are preferred for the treatment of insomnia; longer-acting benzodiazepines are recommended for the treatment of anxiety.

Benzodiazepines are generally viewed as safe and effective for short-term use—about two to four weeks—although cognitive impairment and paradoxical effects such as aggression or behavioral disinhibition can occur. A minority of people have paradoxical reactions after taking benzodiazepines such as worsened agitation or panic. Benzodiazepines are associated with an increased risk of suicide due to aggression, impulsivity, and negative withdrawal effects. Long-term use is controversial because of concerns about decreasing effectiveness, physical dependence, benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, and an increased risk of dementia and cancer. The elderly are at an increased risk of both short- and long-term adverse effects, and as a result, all benzodiazepines are listed in the Beers List of inappropriate medications for older adults. There is controversy concerning the safety of benzodiazepines in pregnancy. While they are not major teratogens, uncertainty remains as to whether they cause cleft palate in a small number of babies and whether neurobehavioural effects occur as a result of prenatal exposure; they are known to cause withdrawal symptoms in the newborn.

Taken in overdose, benzodiazepines can cause dangerous deep unconsciousness, but they are less toxic than their predecessors, the barbiturates, and death rarely results when a benzodiazepine is the only drug taken. Combined with other central nervous system (CNS) depressants such as alcohol and opioids, the potential for toxicity and fatal overdose increases significantly. Benzodiazepines are commonly used recreationally and also often taken in combination with other addictive substances, and are controlled in most countries.

🔗 Medicine

Pyrotherapy (artificial fever) is a method of treatment by raising the body temperature or sustaining an elevated body temperature using a fever. In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F). Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century. In general, it was done by exposing the patient to hot baths, warm air, or (electric) blankets. The technique reached its peak of sophistication in the early 20th century with malariotherapy, in which Plasmodium vivax, a causative agent of malaria, was allowed to infect already ill patients in order to produce intense fever for therapeutic ends. The sophistication of this approach lay in using effective anti-malarial drugs to control the P. vivax infection, while maintaining the fever it causes to the detriment of other, ongoing, and then-incurable infections present in the patient, such as late-stage syphilis. This type of pyrotherapy was most famously used by psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927 for his elaboration of the procedure in treating neurosyphilitics.

🔗 Computer science 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics

Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling. The algorithm mainly encodes consonants; a vowel will not be encoded unless it is the first letter. Soundex is the most widely known of all phonetic algorithms (in part because it is a standard feature of popular database software such as DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Ingres, MS SQL Server and Oracle.) Improvements to Soundex are the basis for many modern phonetic algorithms.

🔗 Computing

SQRL (pronounced "squirrel") or Secure, Quick, Reliable Login (formerly Secure QR Login) is a draft open standard for secure website login and authentication. The software typically uses a link of the scheme sqrl:// or optionally a QR code, where a user identifies via a pseudonymous zero-knowledge proof rather than providing a user ID and password. This method is thought to be impervious to a brute force password attack or data breach. It shifts the burden of security away from the party requesting the authentication and closer to the operating system implementation of what is possible on the hardware, as well as to the user. SQRL was proposed by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation in October 2013 as a way to simplify the process of authentication without the risk of revelation of information about the transaction to a third party.

🔗 Mathematics

In the mathematical fields of set theory and extremal combinatorics, a sunflower or ${\displaystyle \Delta }$-system is a collection of sets whose pairwise intersection is constant. This constant intersection is called the kernel of the sunflower.

The main research question arising in relation to sunflowers is: under what conditions does there exist a large sunflower (a sunflower with many sets) in a given collection of sets? The ${\displaystyle \Delta }$-lemma, sunflower lemma, and the Erdős-Rado sunflower conjecture give successively weaker conditions which would imply the existence of a large sunflower in a given collection, with the latter being one of the most famous open problems of extremal combinatorics.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Poland 🔗 Computing/Early computers

The bomba, or bomba kryptologiczna (Polish for "bomb" or "cryptologic bomb"), was a special-purpose machine designed around October 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski to break German Enigma-machine ciphers.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 Pennsylvania 🔗 Pittsburgh

A Pittsburgh toilet, or Pittsburgh potty, is a common fixture in pre-World War II houses built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States and surrounding region. It consists of an ordinary flush toilet installed in the basement, with no surrounding walls. Most of these toilets are paired with a crude basement shower apparatus and large sink, which often doubles as a laundry basin. Also, because western Pennsylvania is a steep topographical zone, many basements have their own entryway, allowing homeowners to enter from their yard or garage, cleanse themselves in their basement, and then ascend their basement stairs refreshed. Its primary function was to serve as a cleanup station for steel mill workers to clean themselves after returning from work. The toilet fixtures would also limit the harm of sewage backups in hilly Pittsburgh, providing a lower, flushable outlet than the main part of the house.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 International relations 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Europe 🔗 Italy 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Organizations 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/French military history 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Military history/Dutch military history 🔗 Rome 🔗 European history 🔗 Military history/Italian military history 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Military history/British military history 🔗 Military history/Post-Cold War 🔗 NATO

Operation Gladio is the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies. The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries.

During the Cold War, some anti-communist armed groups engaged in the harassment of left-wing parties, torture, terrorist attacks, and massacres in countries such as Italy. The role of the CIA and other intelligence organisations in Gladio—the extent of its activities during the Cold War era and any responsibility for terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960s–early 1980s)—is the subject of debate.

In 1990, the European Parliament adopted a resolution alleging that military secret services in certain member states were involved in serious terrorism and crime, whether or not their superiors were aware. The resolution also urged investigations by the judiciaries of the countries in which those armies operated, so that their modus operandi and actual extension would be revealed. To date, only Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.

The three inquiries reached differing conclusions as regarded different countries. Guido Salvini, a judge who worked in the Italian Massacres Commission, concluded that some right-wing terrorist organizations of the Years of Lead (La Fenice, National Vanguard and Ordine Nuovo) were the trench troops of a secret army, remotely controlled by exponents of the Italian state apparatus and linked to the CIA. Salvini said that the CIA encouraged them to commit atrocities. The Swiss inquiry found that British intelligence secretly cooperated with their army in an operation named P-26 and provided training in combat, communications, and sabotage. It also discovered that P-26 not only would organize resistance in case of a Soviet invasion, but would also become active should the left succeed in achieving a parliamentary majority. The Belgian inquiry could find no conclusive information on their army. No links between them and terrorist attacks were found, and the inquiry noted that the Belgian secret services refused to provide the identity of agents, which could have eliminated all doubts. A 2000 Italian parliamentary report from the left wing coalition Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo reported that terrorist massacres and bombings had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions who were linked to American intelligence. The report also said the United States was guilty of promoting the strategy of tension. Operation Gladio is also suspected to have been activated to counter existing left-wing parliamentary majorities in Europe.

The US State Department published a communiqué in January 2006 that stated claims the United States ordered, supported, or authorized terrorism by stay-behind units, and US-sponsored "false flag" operations are rehashed former Soviet disinformation based on documents that the Soviets forged.

The word gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword.