Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Ships

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/mass media in Russia 🔗 Central Asia 🔗 Insects 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Russia/physical geography of Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Belarus

Depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states refers to observations that there has been a rapid disappearance of various types of cockroaches since the beginning of the 21st century in Russia and other countries of the former USSR. Various factors have been suggested as causes of the depopulation.

🔗 Religion 🔗 India 🔗 Holidays 🔗 Pakistan 🔗 Hinduism 🔗 Nepal 🔗 Singapore 🔗 Hinduism/Krishnaism

Diwali (English: ), Deepavali, or Divali, (IAST: dīpāvalī) also known as the Festival of Lights is a Hindu religious festival and one of the most important festivals within Hinduism. It generally lasts five days (or six in some regions of India), and is celebrated during the Hindu lunisolar month Kartika (between mid-October and mid-November). One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, it symbolizes the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance". The festival is widely associated with Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity and Ganesha, god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles, with many other regional traditions connecting the holiday to Sita and Rama, Vishnu, Krishna, Durga, Shiva, Kali, Hanuman, Kubera, Yama, Yami, Dhanvantari, or Vishvakarman. Furthermore, it is a celebration of the day Rama returned to his kingdom in Ayodhya with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana after defeating the demon Ravana in Lanka and serving 14 years of exile.

In the lead-up to Deepavali, celebrants prepare by cleaning, renovating, and decorating their homes and workplaces with diyas (oil lamps) and rangolis (colorful art circle patterns). During Diwali, people wear their finest clothes, illuminate the interior and exterior of their homes with diyas and rangoli, perform worship ceremonies of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and wealth, light fireworks, and partake in family feasts, where mithai (sweets) and gifts are shared. Originally a Hindu festival, Diwali has transcended religious lines and is also celebrated by Jains and Sikhs. It is a major cultural event for the Hindu, Sikh, and Jain diaspora.

The five-day long festival originated in the Indian subcontinent and is mentioned in early Sanskrit texts. Diwali is usually celebrated twenty days after the Vijayadashami (Dussehra, Dasara, Dashain, Dashahara) festival, with Dhanteras, or the regional equivalent, marking the first day of the festival when celebrants prepare by cleaning their homes and making decorations on the floor, such as rangolis.Some regions of India start Diwali festivities the day before Dhanteras with Govatsa Dwadashi. The second day is Naraka Chaturdashi. The third day is the day of Lakshmi Puja and the darkest night of the traditional month. In some parts of India, the day after Lakshmi Puja is marked with the Govardhan Puja and Balipratipada (Padwa). Some Hindu communities mark the last day as Bhai Dooj or the regional equivalent, which is dedicated to the bond between sister and brother, while other Hindu and Sikh craftsmen communities mark this day as Vishwakarma Puja and observe it by performing maintenance in their work spaces and offering prayers.

Some other faiths in India also celebrate their respective festivals alongside Diwali. The Jains observe their own Diwali which marks the final liberation of Mahavira, the Sikhs celebrate Bandi Chhor Divas to mark the release of Guru Hargobind from a Mughal prison, while Newar Buddhists, unlike other Buddhists, celebrate Diwali by worshipping Lakshmi, while the Hindus of Eastern India and Bangladesh generally celebrate Diwali by worshipping the goddess Kali. The main day of the festival of Diwali (the day of Lakshmi Puja) is an official holiday in Fiji, Guyana, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Psychology

Capgras delusion is a psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (or pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor. It is named after Joseph Capgras (1873–1950), a French psychiatrist.

The Capgras delusion is classified as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of delusional beliefs that involves the misidentification of people, places, or objects. It can occur in acute, transient, or chronic forms. Cases in which patients hold the belief that time has been "warped" or "substituted" have also been reported.

The delusion most commonly occurs in individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but has also been seen in brain injury, dementia with Lewy bodies, and other dementia. It presents often in individuals with a neurodegenerative disease, particularly at an older age. It has also been reported as occurring in association with diabetes, hypothyroidism, and migraine attacks. In one isolated case, the Capgras delusion was temporarily induced in a healthy subject by the drug ketamine. It occurs more frequently in females, with a female to male ratio of approximately 3 to 2.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Video games/Nintendo

Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure are action-adventure games produced by Philips for their CD-i format as part of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda video game series. Not designed for Nintendo platforms, the games owe their existence to negotiations related to Nintendo's decision not to have Philips create a CD add-on to the Super NES. During these negotiations, Philips secured the rights to use Nintendo characters in CD-i third-party developer games. The Faces of Evil and The Wand of Gamelon were developed by Animation Magic and were both released in North America on October 10, 1993, and Zelda's Adventure was developed by Viridis and was released in North America on June 5, 1994. The games were given little funding or development time, and Nintendo provided only cursory input. None of the games are canonical to the Zelda franchise.

CD-i players did not sell well and the games saw relatively small sales figures. Though the games initially received largely positive reviews, they have been universally criticized since the mid-2000s. This is attributed to the reaction of many gamers to the obscure games' full motion video cutscenes when they first became widely available through video-sharing websites such as YouTube. The cutscenes are perceived to be of poor quality. Because the aging early 1990s visual effects of the titles failed to live up to the graphic effects of the 2000s, and because for many fans this was their first experience of the games, the CD-i Zelda titles have developed a critical reputation as particularly poor based largely on animation quality and to an extent awkward controls. In the eyes of "devout" hardcore gamers, according to Edge, the games are now considered "tantamount to blasphemy".

Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are played using the side-scrolling view introduced in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, while Zelda's Adventure has a top-down view reminiscent of the original The Legend of Zelda. All the CD-i Zelda games begin with animated FMVs to illustrate the capabilities of the CD-ROM format, save Zelda's Adventure, which begins with a live-action video.

🔗 Computing

In computing, a pizza box is a style of case design for desktop computers or network switches. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, normally 1.5 to 4 inches or 4 to 10 centimetres in height, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. This is in contrast to a tower system, whose case height is much greater than the width and has an "upright" appearance. In modern usage, the term "pizza box" is normally reserved for very flat cases with height no more than 2 inches (51 mm), while those taller than 2 inches are referred to as desktop cases instead.

The common setup of a pizza box system is to have the display monitor placed directly on top of the case, which serves as a podium to elevate the monitor more towards the user's eye level, and to have other peripherals placed in front and alongside the case. Occasionally, the pizza box may be laid on its sides in a tower-like orientation.

Data General's Aviion Unix server was the first to coin the expression when it advertised in 1991 with the tagline "Who just fit mainframe power in a pizza box?", but most computers generally referred to as pizza box systems were high-end desktop systems such as Sun Microsystems workstations sold in the 1990s, most notably the SPARCstation 1 and SPARCstation 5. Other notable examples have been among the highest-performing desktop computers of their generations, including the SGI Indy, the NeXTstation, and the Amiga 1000, but the form factor was also seen in budget and lower-end lines such as the Macintosh LC family.

The original SPARCstation 1 design included an expansion bus technology, SBus, expressly designed for the form factor; expansion cards were small, especially in comparison to other expansion cards in use at the time such as VMEbus, and were mounted horizontally instead of vertically. PC-compatible computers in this type of case typically use the PCI expansion bus and are usually either a) limited to one or two horizontally placed expansion cards or b) require special low-profile expansion cards, shorter than the PCI cards regular PCs use.

The density of computing power and stackability of pizza box systems also made them attractive for use in data centers. Systems originally designed for desktop use were placed on shelves inside of 19-inch racks, sometimes requiring that part of their cases be cut off for them to fit. Since the late 1990s, pizza boxes have been a common form factor in office cubicles, data centers or industrial applications, where desktop space, rack room and density are critical. Servers in this form factor, as well as higher-end Ethernet switches, are now designed for rack mounting. Rack mount 1U computers come in all types of configurations and depths.

The pizza box form factor for smaller personal systems and thin clients remains in use well into the 21st century, though it is increasingly being superseded by laptops, nettops or All-in-One PC designs that embed the already size-reduced computer onto the keyboard or display monitor.

🔗 Antarctica 🔗 Transport

The Antarctic Snow Cruiser was a vehicle designed from 1937 to 1939 under the direction of Thomas Poulter, intended to facilitate transport in Antarctica during the United States Antarctic Service Expedition (1939–41). The Snow Cruiser was also known as "The Penguin," "Penguin 1" or "Turtle" in some published material.

Poulter had been second in command of Byrd's Second Antarctic Expedition, launched in 1934. From his time in the Antarctic, Poulter had devised several innovative features. However, the massive Snow Cruiser generally failed to operate as hoped under the difficult conditions, and was eventually abandoned in Antarctica. Rediscovered under a deep layer of snow in 1958, it later disappeared again due to shifting ice conditions.

🔗 Plants

An albino redwood is a redwood tree which is unable to produce chlorophyll, and has white needles instead of the normal green. It survives by obtaining sugar through the connections between its roots and those of neighboring normal redwood(s), usually the parent tree from whose base it has sprouted. Sap exchange through roots is a general phenomenon among redwoods. About 400 are known. They can be found in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Huddart Park, and The Santa Lucia Preserve, with eleven trees in the first. The exact locations are not publicized to protect the rare trees. They reach a maximum height of about 20 m (66 ft). Other conifers lack the ability to graft their roots, so 'albino' mutants of other species do not survive to become sizable trees.

The trees were important to Native Americans and were recorded in their legends. For example, the Pomo people used them in their cleansing ceremonies.

Albino redwoods are generally regarded as parasitic plants, but as of 2016 one researcher speculates that they are supported by other trees for their role in storing toxic heavy metals. Albinos apparently accumulate more metals than normal trees because of defective stomata, which cause them to lose more water through transpiration, forcing them to compensate by taking up more water through their roots.

Six phenotypes of albino redwood have been classified: white, bright yellow, cellular virescent green, pale green, mottled and nonchimeric variegated. Such mutants can be either basal (growing from a burl at the base of a tree) or aerial (branching off from a tree above the ground). The bright yellow form is exclusively aerial and is thought to be associated with excess xanthophyll production. The pale green form lacks just one specific type of chlorophyll and is almost always basal. Cellular virescent green trees have a few normal cells (whose abundance may vary over time) interspersed among the mutant cells.

Ten cases are known of chimeric redwoods that have a mosaic of albino and normal tissues. Only a single chimeric redwood is known to produce cones. Formerly threatened by the Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit rail development, it has since been replanted.

Three phenotypes of chimeric redwoods have been noted: sectorial, mericlinal and periclinal. In sectorial mutants, albino cells are present vertically through all cell layers, with genotype boundaries usually parallel to the stem. Mericlinal trees have mutant cells in only some cell layers and have an unstable phenotype; the albino cells can disappear and reappear in successive years. A periclinal chimera has both mutant and normal cells distributed horizontally across the tip of each bud propagating at equal rates, leading to a very stable phenotype.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Lists 🔗 Military history/World War I 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/American Civil War 🔗 Project-independent assessment

The following is a list of Irish-American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who were awarded the American military's highest decoration — the Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is bestowed "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty, in actual combat against an armed enemy force." The medal is awarded by the President of the United States on behalf of the Congress.

Of the 3,464 Medals of Honor awarded as of September 17, 2009, an estimated 2,021 (58%) have been awarded to Irish-American recipients, more than twice the number awarded any other ethnic group; 257 Irish-born Americans have received the Medal of Honor which represents more than half of foreign-born MOH recipients. A monument to these Irish-born Medal of Honor recipients is located at Valley Forge's Medal of Honor Grove; erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The first Irish American to receive the Medal was Michael Madden, who received it for his actions in the American Civil War (Note that the earliest action for which the Medal of Honor was awarded was to Irish American U.S. Army Assistant Surgeon Bernard J.D. Irwin for the engagement at Apache Pass, February 1861. The award was made three decades after the event and after Madden's award).

Tilt! How to get bias into a Wikipedia article

To all you budding propagandists in Wikiland: too many of you are working like a bunch of amateurs. Sorry to be so negative, but you have to understand that getting bias into the Wikipedia is a skill; it requires practice, finesse and imagination. It has to be learned; it is not a natural thing, though some have more talent for it than others.

I have been following the Middle East Wikipedia battleground for a few years now, and have been very impressed with the skill of some editors in introducing bias into articles. To ingenuous editors, some of these techniques may seem innocuous enough; in many cases, it is hard to see how proposed edits are biasing an article one way or another. It is, in fact, only in the last few months that I have been able to define what these techniques are and how they work to introduce bias.

The first thing you need to know as a budding propagandist is this: there are two levels at which bias is introduced into the Wikipedia: at the article level, and at the topic level. You need to set your sights high: you don't want to merely bias a single article, you want the entire Wikipedia on your side. Without understanding the importance of topic bias, it is hard to understand many of the article-level techniques, so I will start with the topic level.