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🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom 🔗 Scotland 🔗 Central America

The Darien scheme was an unsuccessful attempt at establishing a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Panama on the Gulf of Darién in the late 1690s. The aim was for the colony to have an overland route that connected the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. From its contemporary time to the present day, claims have been made that the undertaking was beset by poor planning and provisioning, divided leadership, a lack of demand for trade goods particularly caused by an English trade blockade, devastating epidemics of disease, collusion between the English East India Company and the English government to frustrate it, and a failure to anticipate the Spanish Empire's military response. It was finally abandoned in March 1700 after a siege by Spanish forces, which also blockaded the harbour.

As the Company of Scotland was backed by approximately 20% of all the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the entire Lowlands in substantial financial ruin and was an important factor in weakening their resistance to the Act of Union (completed in 1707). The land where the Darien colony was built, in the modern province of Guna Yala, is virtually uninhabited today.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Marketing & Advertising

Domain tasting is the practice of temporarily registering a domain under the five-day Add Grace Period at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated second-level domain. During this period, a registration must be fully refunded by the domain name registry if cancelled. This was designed to address accidental registrations, but domain tasters use the Add Grace Period for illegal purposes.

🔗 Computing

Anton is a massively parallel supercomputer designed and built by D. E. Shaw Research in New York, first running in 2008. It is a special-purpose system for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of proteins and other biological macromolecules. An Anton machine consists of a substantial number of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), interconnected by a specialized high-speed, three-dimensional torus network.

Unlike earlier special-purpose systems for MD simulations, such as MDGRAPE-3 developed by RIKEN in Japan, Anton runs its computations entirely on specialized ASICs, instead of dividing the computation between specialized ASICs and general-purpose host processors.

Each Anton ASIC contains two computational subsystems. Most of the calculation of electrostatic and van der Waals forces is performed by the high-throughput interaction subsystem (HTIS). This subsystem contains 32 deeply pipelined modules running at 800 MHz arranged much like a systolic array. The remaining calculations, including the bond forces and the fast Fourier transforms (used for long-range electrostatics), are performed by the flexible subsystem. This subsystem contains four general-purpose Tensilica cores (each with cache and scratchpad memory) and eight specialized but programmable SIMD cores called geometry cores. The flexible subsystem runs at 400 MHz.

Anton's network is a 3D torus and thus each chip has 6 inter-node links with a total in+out bandwidth of 607.2 Gbit/s. An inter-node link is composed of two equal one-way links (one traveling in each direction), with each one-way link having 50.6 Gbit/s of bandwidth. Each one-way link is composed of 11 lanes, where a lane is a differential pair of wires signaling at 4.6 Gbit/s. The per-hop latency in Anton's network is 50 ns. Each ASIC is also attached to its own DRAM bank, enabling large simulations.

The performance of a 512-node Anton machine is over 17,000 nanoseconds of simulated time per day for a protein-water system consisting of 23,558 atoms. In comparison, MD codes running on general-purpose parallel computers with hundreds or thousands of processor cores achieve simulation rates of up to a few hundred nanoseconds per day on the same chemical system. The first 512-node Anton machine became operational in October 2008. The multiple petaFLOP, distributed-computing project Folding@home has achieved similar aggregate ensemble simulation timescales, comparable to the total time of a single continuous simulation on Anton, specifically achieving the 1.5-millisecond range in January 2010.

The Anton supercomputer is named after Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who is often referred to as "the father of microscopy" because he built high-precision optical instruments and used them to visualize a wide variety of organisms and cell types for the first time.

The ANTON 2 machine with four 512 nodes and substantially increased speed and problem size has been described.

The National Institutes of Health have supported an ANTON for the biomedical research community at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Carnegie-Mellon University, and recently approved support of an ANTON 2 there.

🔗 Death 🔗 China 🔗 Socialism

The Guangxi Massacre (simplified Chinese: 广西大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 廣西大屠殺; pinyin: Guǎngxī Dàtúshā), or Guangxi Cultural Revolution Massacre (广西文革大屠杀; 廣西文革大屠殺; Guǎngxī Wéngé Dàtúshā), was a series of events involving lynching and direct massacre in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The official record shows an estimated death toll from 100,000 to 150,000. Methods of slaughter included beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, disemboweling, and more. In certain areas including Wuxuan County and Wuming District, massive human cannibalism occurred even though no famine existed; according to public records available, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and at least thousands of people participated in the cannibalism. Other researchers have pointed out that in a county alone, 421 people had been eaten, and there were reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi.

After the Cultural Revolution, people who were involved in the massacre or cannibalism received only minor punishments during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period; in Wuxuan County where at least 38 people were eaten, fourteen participants were prosecuted, receiving up to 14 years in prison, while ninety-one members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were expelled from the party and thirty-nine non-party officials were either demoted or had a salary cut. Although the cannibalism was sponsored by local offices of Communist Party and militia, no direct evidence suggests that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership including Mao Zedong endorsed the cannibalism or even knew of it.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Polynesia 🔗 Australia 🔗 Canada 🔗 New Zealand 🔗 Politics 🔗 Women 🔗 Biography/Royalty and Nobility 🔗 Women's History 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom 🔗 South Africa 🔗 Zimbabwe 🔗 Caribbean 🔗 Melanesia 🔗 Scouting/Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting 🔗 Scouting 🔗 Current events 🔗 Malta 🔗 Commonwealth 🔗 Caribbean/Jamaica 🔗 Canada/Political parties and politicians in Canada 🔗 Polynesia/Niue 🔗 Caribbean/Antigua and Barbuda 🔗 Caribbean/Bahamas 🔗 Zimbabwe/Rhodesia 🔗 Polynesia/Cook Islands 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Kitts and Nevis 🔗 Polynesia/Tuvalu 🔗 Belize 🔗 Melanesia/Solomon Islands 🔗 Caribbean/Barbados 🔗 Grenada 🔗 Canada/Governments of Canada 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Lucia 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 🔗 British Royalty 🔗 Melanesia/Papua New Guinea

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the second-longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country. At the time of her death, Elizabeth was queen of 14 other Commonwealth realms in addition to the UK.

Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother, King Edward VIII, making Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark, and their marriage lasted 73 years until his death in April 2021. They had four children together: Charles III; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.

When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth—then 25 years old—became queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (known today as Sri Lanka), as well as Head of the Commonwealth. Elizabeth reigned as a constitutional monarch through major political changes such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, devolution in the United Kingdom, the decolonisation of Africa, and the United Kingdom's accession to the European Communities and withdrawal from the European Union. The number of her realms varied over time as territories have gained independence and some realms have become republics. Her many historic visits and meetings include state visits to China in 1986, Russia in 1994, the Republic of Ireland in 2011, and visits with five Popes.

Significant events include Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinum Jubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012, and 2022, respectively. Elizabeth was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, and the second-longest verifiable reigning sovereign monarch in world history, only behind Louis XIV of France. She faced occasional republican sentiment and media criticism of her family, particularly after the breakdowns of her children's marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the death of her former daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. However, support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom remained consistently high, as did her personal popularity. Elizabeth died on 8 September 2022 at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire. She was succeeded by her eldest son, Charles III.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 United States/Ohio 🔗 University of California

Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was an American mathematician known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory. He was a professor emeritus of mathematics and EECS at the University of California, Berkeley.

Berlekamp was the inventor of an algorithm to factor polynomials, and was one of the inventors of the Berlekamp–Welch algorithm and the Berlekamp–Massey algorithms, which are used to implement Reed–Solomon error correction.

Berlekamp had also been active in money management. In 1986, he began information-theoretic studies of commodity and financial futures.

🔗 Physics 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Science

Some of the major unsolved problems in physics are theoretical, meaning that existing theories seem incapable of explaining a certain observed phenomenon or experimental result. The others are experimental, meaning that there is a difficulty in creating an experiment to test a proposed theory or investigate a phenomenon in greater detail.

There are still some deficiencies in the Standard Model of physics, such as the origin of mass, the strong CP problem, neutrino mass, matter–antimatter asymmetry, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Another problem lies within the mathematical framework of the Standard Model itself—the Standard Model is inconsistent with that of general relativity, to the point that one or both theories break down under certain conditions (for example within known spacetime singularities like the Big Bang and the centers of black holes beyond the event horizon).

🔗 Biography 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Russia 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Aviation/aerospace biography 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Aviation/Soviet aviation

Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev (Russian: Михаил Петрович Девятаев; Moksha/Erzya: Михаил Петрович Девятаев; 8 July 1917 – 24 November 2002) was a Soviet fighter pilot known for his incredible escape from a Nazi concentration camp on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea.

🔗 Fishes

The sturddlefish is a hybrid of the American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) and the Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), accidentally created by researchers in 2019 and announced in 2020. Obtaining living hybrids through breeding individuals from different families is unusual, especially given that the two species' last common ancestor lived 184 million years ago. The hybrids were created accidentally during attempts to induce gynogenesis, a type of parthenogenic reproduction where a sperm cell must be present to trigger embryogenesis but does not genetically contribute to the offspring. Hundreds of hybrid fish were created, of which about two-thirds survived over one month, and about 100 survived for one year. As of July 2020, all living hybrid fish are living in captivity at the research lab in Hungary. There are no further plans to create new sturddlefish.

🔗 Computing

Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem. Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency. Messages are digitally signed and added to an append-only list of messages published by an author. SSB is primarily used for implementing distributed social networks, and utilizes cryptography to assure that content remains unforged as it is propagated through the network.