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๐Ÿ”— Elitzurโ€“Vaidman bomb tester

๐Ÿ”— Physics

The Elitzurโ€“Vaidman bomb-tester is a quantum mechanics thought experiment that uses interaction-free measurements to verify that a bomb is functional without having to detonate it. It was conceived in 1993 by Avshalom Elitzur and Lev Vaidman. Since their publication, real-world experiments have confirmed that their theoretical method works as predicted.

The bomb tester takes advantage of two characteristics of elementary particles, such as photons or electrons: nonlocality and wave-particle duality. By placing the particle in a quantum superposition, it is possible for the experiment to verify that the bomb works without triggering its detonation, although there is still a 50% chance that the bomb will detonate in the effort.

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๐Ÿ”— Bloom's Taxonomy

๐Ÿ”— Psychology ๐Ÿ”— Education

Bloom's taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and sensory domains. The cognitive domain list has been the primary focus of most traditional education and is frequently used to structure curriculum learning objectives, assessments and activities.

The models were named after Benjamin Bloom, who chaired the committee of educators that devised the taxonomy. He also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals.

๐Ÿ”— A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010)

๐Ÿ”— British Museum ๐Ÿ”— Radio ๐Ÿ”— BBC ๐Ÿ”— Radio/UK Radio

A History of the World in 100 Objects was a joint project of BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum, comprising a 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor. In 15-minute presentations broadcast on weekdays on Radio 4, MacGregor used objects of ancient art, industry, technology and arms, all of which are in the British Museum's collections, as an introduction to parts of human history. The series, four years in planning, began on 18 January 2010 and was broadcast over 20 weeks. A book to accompany the series, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, was published by Allen Lane on 28 October 2010. The entire series is also available for download along with an audio version of the book for purchase. The British Museum won the 2011 Art Fund Prize for its role in hosting the project.

In 2016, a touring exhibition of several items depicted on the radio program, also titled A History of the World in 100 Objects, travelled to various destinations, including Abu Dhabi (Manarat Al Saadiyat), Taiwan (National Palace Museum in Taipei), Japan (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo, Kyushu National Museum in Daizafu, and Kobe City Museum in Kobe), Australia (Western Australian Museum in Perth and National Museum of Australia in Canberra), and China (National Museum of China in Beijing and Shanghai Museum in Shanghai).

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๐Ÿ”— Nunchi

๐Ÿ”— Korea

Nunchi, sometimes noonchi, is a Korean concept signifying the subtle art and ability to listen and gauge others' moods. It first appears in the 17th century as nunch'ลญi (็œผๅ‹ข in Chinese characters), meaning "eye force/power". In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. It is of central importance to the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Nunchi is literally translated as "eye-measure". It is closely related to the broader concept of paralanguage, however nunchi also relies on an understanding of one's status relative to the person with whom they're interacting. It can be seen as the embodiment of skills necessary to communicate effectively in high context culture.

The concept of nunchi, and one's abundance or lack thereof, forms the basis of many common expressions and idioms. For example, a socially clumsy person can be described as nunchi eoptta (๋ˆˆ์น˜ ์—†๋‹ค), meaning "absence of nunchi."

๋ˆˆ์น˜ Nunchi is briefly defined as the high social sensitivity of Koreans which basically means they are able to ascertain others moods by being around them and talking to them. They are sensitive to what others say indirectly, because they want to maintain harmony. They do this by the use of the skill named "nunchi" which literally means eye measure in Korean, they sense someone's "kibun", Kibun is a Korean word which relates to mood, current feelings, and the state of mind. Facilitating nunchi, encouraging the use of this skill, is expected to result in rich understanding. It is of central importance to the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. With nunchi, Koreans are using non-verbal cues to convey emotion and meaning through various means, including voice pitch and volume as well as intonation. Nunchi also relies heavily on an understanding of one's status relative to the person with whom one is interacting. Because Korea, as with other high-context cultures caters toward in-groups that have similar experiences and expectations and from which inferences are drawn, many things are left unsaid here. The culture does the explaining, in effect. Both Kibun and Nunchi are very difficult concepts for non-Koreans to get the hang of and they will generally be forgiven for their ignorance of these concepts and consequent rude behavior, especially if they are high on the status ladder. However, one gains more than one loses by trying to understand and, as much as possible, behaving according to these rules of behavior. In Korea, personal relations frequently take precedence over business. In order to be successful, it is vital to establish good, personal relationships based on mutual trust and benefit Koreans judge this by Nunchi to get a base understanding of the individual they just met. Korean business culture is firmly grounded in respectful rapport and in order to establish this, it is essential to have the right introduction to approach the company. Koreans will use Nunchi to make sure the right approach is being used, often through a mutual friend or acquaintance at the appropriate level. Koreans spend a significant amount of time developing and fostering personal contacts. Therefore, time should be allocated for this process, particularly during the first meeting, which is frequently used to simply establish rapport and build trust.

The phrase ๋ˆˆ์น˜ ์žˆ๋‹ค (nunchi itda) refers to someone who's quick witted, can understand the situation quickly, or has common sense. Another way to say this is ๋ˆˆ์น˜ ๋น ๋ฅด๋‹ค (nunchi ppareuda) โ€“ to have quick nunchi.

In Korean, the phrase ๋ˆˆ์น˜ ์—†๋‹ค (nunchi eoptta) refers to someone that is clueless, someone that doesn't know what's going on, or simply doesn't have any common sense basically it is the exact opposite of nunchi or when someones nunchi is lacking.

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๐Ÿ”— Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

๐Ÿ”— Disaster management ๐Ÿ”— Death ๐Ÿ”— Kansas City ๐Ÿ”— Missouri

On July 17, 1981, two walkways collapsed at the Hyatt Regency Kansas City hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, one directly above the other. They crashed onto a tea dance being held in the hotel's lobby, killing 114 and injuring 216. As a product of a corporate culture of profound neglect, the disaster contributed many lessons to the study of engineering ethics and errors, and to emergency management. The event remains the deadliest nonโ€‘deliberate structural failure in American history, and it was the deadliest structural collapse in the U.S. until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.

๐Ÿ”— The Toynbee Convector

๐Ÿ”— Novels ๐Ÿ”— Children's literature ๐Ÿ”— Novels/Science fiction ๐Ÿ”— Novels/Short story

"The Toynbee Convector" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy magazine in 1984, the story was subsequently featured in a 1988 short story collection also titled The Toynbee Convector.

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๐Ÿ”— Programma 101, the first commercial โ€œdesktop computerโ€

๐Ÿ”— Computing

The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial programmable desktop calculators, although not the first. Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the P101 has the main features of large computers of that period. It was launched at the 1964 New York World's Fair; volume production started in 1965. A futuristic design for its time, the Programma 101 was priced at $3,200 (equivalent to $26,000 in 2019). About 44,000 units were sold, primarily in the US.

It is usually called a printing programmable calculator or desktop calculator because its arithmetic instructions correspond to calculator operations.

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๐Ÿ”— Intel iAPX 432

๐Ÿ”— Computing ๐Ÿ”— Computing/Computer hardware

The iAPX 432 (Intel Advanced Performance Architecture) is a discontinued computer architecture introduced in 1981. It was Intel's first 32-bit processor design. The main processor of the architecture, the general data processor, is implemented as a set of two separate integrated circuits, due to technical limitations at the time. Although some early 8086, 80186 and 80286-based systems and manuals also used the iAPX prefix for marketing reasons, the iAPX 432 and the 8086 processor lines are completely separate designs with completely different instruction sets.

The project started in 1975 as the 8800 (after the 8008 and the 8080) and was intended to be Intel's major design for the 1980s. Unlike the 8086, which was designed the following year as a successor to the 8080, the iAPX 432 was a radical departure from Intel's previous designs meant for a different market niche, and completely unrelated to the 8080 or x86 product lines.

The iAPX 432 project is considered a commercial failure for Intel, and was discontinued in 1986.

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๐Ÿ”— The Illiac IV Computer

๐Ÿ”— Computing ๐Ÿ”— Computing/Computer hardware

The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating point units (FPUs) and four central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per second. Due to budget constraints, only a single "quadrant" with 64 FPUs and a single CPU was built. Since the FPUs all had to process the same instruction โ€“ ADD, SUB etc. โ€“ in modern terminology the design would be considered to be single instruction, multiple data, or SIMD.

The concept of building a computer using an array of processors came to Daniel Slotnick while working as a programmer on the IAS machine in 1952. A formal design did not start until 1960, when Slotnick was working at Westinghouse Electric and arranged development funding under a US Air Force contract. When that funding ended in 1964, Slotnick moved to the University of Illinois and joined the Illinois Automatic Computer (ILLIAC) team. With funding from Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), they began the design of a newer concept with 256 64-bit processors instead of the original concept with 1,024 1-bit processors.

While the machine was being built at Burroughs, the university began building a new facility to house it. Political tension over the funding from the US Department of Defense led to the ARPA and the University fearing for the machine's safety. When the first 64-processor quadrant of the machine was completed in 1972, it was sent to the NASA Ames Research Center in California. After three years of thorough modification to fix various flaws, ILLIAC IV was connected to the ARPANet for distributed use in November 1975, becoming the first network-available supercomputer, beating the Cray-1 by nearly 12 months.

Running at half its design speed, the one-quadrant ILLIAC IV delivered 50ย MFLOP peak, making it the fastest computer in the world at that time. It is also credited with being the first large computer to use solid-state memory, as well as the most complex computer built to date, with over 1 million gates. Generally considered a failure due to massive budget overruns, the design was instrumental in the development of new techniques and systems for programming parallel systems. In the 1980s, several machines based on ILLIAC IV concepts were successfully delivered.

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๐Ÿ”— Polywater

๐Ÿ”— Physics ๐Ÿ”— Skepticism

Polywater was a hypothesized polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s. By 1969 the popular press had taken notice and sparked fears of a "polywater gap" in the US.

Increased press attention also brought with it increased scientific attention, and as early as 1970 doubts about its authenticity were being circulated. By 1973 it was found to be illusory, being just water with any number of common organic compounds contaminating it.

Today, polywater is best known as an example of pathological science.

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