https://akethical.wordpress.com/

JAC, kharagpur, Kharagpur (2026)

09/10/2022

The gadget!
The nuclear test of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon was codenamed Trinity, but the atomic device was nicknamed The Gadget. The date of the Trinity test is usually considered to be the beginning of the Atomic Age. The gadget was an implosion-type plutonium device, similar in design to the Fat Man bomb used three weeks later in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.

The term "Gadget" was a laboratory euphemism for the bomb, from which the laboratory's weapon physics division, "G Division", took its name in August 1944. At that time it did not refer specifically to the Trinity Test device as it had yet to be developed, but once it was, it became the laboratory code name. The Trinity Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device, as was the Fat Man used a few weeks later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The two were very similar, with only minor differences, the most obvious being the absence of fuzing and the external ballistic casing. The bombs were still under development, and small changes continued to be made to the Fat Man design.

The Gadget was an implosion device, which means the plutonium core is surrounded by many small explosives, these compress the plutonium and bring it closer to the point of causing it to go super critical. All those wires are attached to different explosives which burn at different frequencies. The trick of the 20 explosions is that they push the pieces of uranium (or plutonium) together to a ball with an over-critical mass, which explodes. They have to time this extremely accurately, however. Microseconds differences will make the ball lopsided and less effective. Part of the solution is to make each and every cable the same length which is why the Gadget looks like a ball of wires.

09/10/2022

🐈‍⬛ black cat
In Celtic mythology, a fairy known as the Cat sith takes the form of a black cat. Black cats are also considered good luck in the rest of Britain and Japan. Furthermore, it is believed that a lady who owns a black cat will have many suitors.

08/10/2022

QWERTY keyboard 😧

"Why aren't the letters on the keyboard in alphabetical order?" asked every child ever when presented with a keyboard. Most of us were taught that the man who invented the keyboard created the QWERTY design to slow typists down. The faster someone typed, the more often the typewriter jammed, so Christopher Scholes put common letters in hard-to-reach spots.

This popular theory is not true. According to a story, the QWERTY keyboard was created based on the advice of telegraph operators. The first keyboards were being used by telegraph operators to translate morse code, and the keyboards were built for that.

The QWERTY controversy is coming to light now, as techies reconsider the utility of the keyboard configuration. The time has come, some say, to revise the keyboard for an increasingly mobile world.

The recently unveiled KALQ keyboard for smartphones is made for typing with just your thumbs.

04/10/2022

The voice of Apple!
You know him as the smart, nerdy dude from Jurassic Park and Independence Day. But if things had turned out differently, Hollywood actor Jeff Goldblum might have added another role to his long list of credits: the voice of Siri.

Speaking on the Today Show in Australia recently, Goldblum revealed that Apple's late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs once offered him the opportunity to do some voiceover work. "Steve Jobs called me up a few decades ago to be the voice of Apple," Goldblum said, according to CNET. "That was early on, and I did not know it was Steve Jobs."

Sadly, the collaboration never came to pass. A Georgia-based voiceover actress named Susan Bennett went on to become the first voice of Siri.

Gamers may remember that Goldblum did, however, end up doing some voiceover work for Call of Duty: Black Ops III alongside actors like Heather Graham, Ron Perlman, and Neal McDonough.

Goldblum last year reprised his role of David Levinson in Independence Day: Resurgence. In the movie, his character serves as the first Director of the Earth Space Defense (ESD) program, giving his iconic smart yet laconic commentary as events unfold: "That's bigger than the last one" he says, as alien ships descend. These days, the actor has been busy promoting an Australian food ordering app called Menulog and shutting down rumors that he kicked the bucket.

04/10/2022

The world's first speeding ticket !

We hear much these days, in some of the more deranged newspapers, of the "War on the Motorist", of how the police, government, local councils, and the like are concerned only with making as much money as possible from the poor, put-upon drivers of England, via parking charges, traffic calming measures, and most heinously of all, the hated speed cameras.

All this whingeing can be traced back to an event that took place on this day 119 years ago – when the world's first speeding ticket was issued to a motorist.

A reckless tearaway by the name of Walter Arnold was spotted by a constable hurtling through the streets of Paddock Wood, Kent, at four times the legal speed limit.

The limit at the time was 2mph. You could have walked faster. But in early 1896, the law said you could only go 2mph, and you had to have a chap walking in front waving a red flag to alert the nervous of your approach. But the crazed boy racer sped through the town at 8mph, with no flag-bearer sprinting in front

The astonished police constable mounted his pushbike and a five-mile chase ensued (presumably, bicycles were slower too). Arnold was caught and sent before the beak, where he was fined a shilling.

Mr. Arnold may not have been too unhappy with the publicity his case generated, however. He was one of the country's first car dealers, selling imported Benz cars from Germany. And between 1896 and 1899 his company made its cars, the 'Arnold Motor Carriage', based on the Benz.

Later that year, the Locomotives Act removed the need for a flag-bearer and increased the speed limit to a hair-raising 14mph. To celebrate, a race from London to Brighton was organized, called the 'Emancipation Run'. Fittingly, Walter Arnold took part, driving one of his cars.

A re-enactment of the run took place in 1927, organized by the newspaper the Daily Sketch. It has been held almost continuously since, like the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, for cars built before 1905.

03/10/2022

The History of shampoo 😬

In the Indian subcontinent, a variety of herbs and their extracts have been used as shampoos since ancient times. They used to different saps for various shampoo types.

Cleansing with hair and body massage during one's daily bath was a vulgarity of early colonial traders in India. When they returned to Europe, they introduced the newly learned habits in the 1760s, including the hair treatment and chapayati change to the shampoo in Europa.

Sake Dean Mahomed, an Indian traveller, surgeon, and entrepreneur, is credited with introducing the practice of champooi or "shampooing" to Britain. In 1814, Mahomed, with his Irish wife Jane Daly, opened the first commercial "shampooing" vapour masseur bath in England, in Brighton. He described the treatment in a local paper as "The Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (a type of Turkish bath), a cure to many diseases and giving full relief when everything fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout, stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains in the joints."

03/10/2022

Mycology?

Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy, and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicine, food, and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection.

A biologist specializing in mycology is called a mycologist.

Mycology branches into the field of phytopathology, the study of plant diseases, and the two disciplines remain closely related because the vast majority of plant pathogens are fungi.
Historically, mycology was a branch of botany because, although fungi are evolutionarily more closely related to animals than to plants, this was not recognized until a few decades ago. Pioneer mycologists included Elias Magnus Fries, Christian Hendrik Persoon, Anton de Bary, and Lewis David von Schweinitz.

Many fungi produce toxins, antibiotics, and other secondary metabolites. For example, the cosmopolitan (worldwide) genus Fusarium and its toxins associated with fatal outbreaks of alimentary toxic aleukia in humans were extensively studied by Abraham Joffe.

Fungi are fundamental for life on earth in their roles as symbionts, e.g. in the form of mycorrhizae, insect symbionts, and lichens. Many fungi are able to break down complex organic biomolecules such as lignin, the more durable component of wood, and pollutants such as xenobiotics, petroleum, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. By decomposing these molecules, fungi play a critical role in the global carbon cycle.

Fungi and other organisms traditionally recognized as fungi, such as oomycetes and myxomycetes (slime molds), often are economically and socially important, as some cause diseases of animals (such as histoplasmosis) as well as plants (such as Dutch elm disease and Rice blast).

Apart from pathogenic fungi, many fungal species are very important in controlling plant diseases caused by different pathogens. For example, species of the filamentous fungal genus Trichoderma are considered as one of the most important biological control agents as an alternative to chemical-based products for effective crop disease management.

Field meetings to find interesting species of fungi are known as 'forays', after the first such meeting organized by the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club in 1868 and entitled "A foray among the funguses"

Some fungi can cause disease in humans and other animals - The study of pathogenic fungi that infect animals is referred to as medical mycology.

03/10/2022

Resolution of human eyes 🎭
A 576-megapixel resolution means that in order to create a screen with a picture so sharp and clear that you can't distinguish the individual pixels, you would have to pack 576 million pixels into an area the size of your field of view. To get to his number, Dr. Clark assumed optimal visual acuity across the field of view; that is, it assumes that your eyes are moving around the scene before you. But in a single snapshot-length glance, the resolution drops to a fraction of that: around 5–15 megapixels.

That's because your eyes have a lot of flaws that wouldn't be acceptable in a camera. You only see high resolution in a very small area in the center of your vision, called the fovea. You have a blind spot where your optic nerve meets up with your retina. You move your eyes around a scene not only to take in more information but to correct for these imperfections in your visual system.

The eye isn't a camera lens, taking snapshots to save in your memory bank. It's more like a detective, collecting clues from your surrounding environment, then taking them back to the brain to put the pieces together and form a complete picture. There's certainly a screen resolution at which our eyes can no longer distinguish pixels but when it comes to our daily visual experience, talking in megapixels is way too simple.

03/10/2022

Modern farming is harming 🗣

Current agriculture, which consists of monocultures and extensive use of fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide, has caused a significant loss of biodiversity, has decreased soil quality and has polluted the environment. Due to rising awareness of these issues, researchers are now exploring alternatives, such as vertical indoor farms, hydroponics and cultured meat.

However, there is a clear divide in approaches towards future agriculture. Technologists rely on a predominately tech-centric approach, while organic farmers rely on natural methods such as polycultures, mixed farming with livestock and crops, and composting. Even though the two camps do not have much in common, the pareto-optimal solution for humanity and the environment may lie in the middle - tech-enhanced permaculture.

By combining technology, permaculture, sustainable policies and consumer behavior, we could heal our planet, reduce our blood pressure and feed 10 billion people.

03/10/2022

17

One anagram of the Roman numeral XVII is VIXI, which in Latin translates as "I have lived", with the implication "My life is over" or "I'm dead". Some Alitalia planes have no row 17, some Italian hotels have no room 17. The 17th curve at the Cesana bobsled run at last year's Winter Olympics in Turin was "Senza Nome", or "Without a name".
"It's true, Italians don't consider 17 a good omen," said one Italian writer yesterday ahead of Italy's crucial Euro 2008 qualifier with Scotland this Saturday, 17 November.
A quick perusal of the record books shows that Italy have played 11 matches on the 17th of a month in the past 30 years. They have won just four. Painful reversals included the agonising World Cup final penalty defeat against Brazil, on 17 July 1994.

Will Scotland be grasping at this straw? Will they heck. "I'm not superstitious and that kind of thing doesn't come into it," said Andy Watson, managerial assistant to Scotland's Alex McLeish yesterday.

Nor does he believe Italy will arrive unsettled by the latest trauma in their domestic game that left one fan dead – shot by police – and many others rioting last weekend.

"My view is they will not be affected at all," Watson said. "I think they will be professional and disciplined. If you look at the last World Cup, there was a big furore [over match-fixing] which they turned to their advantage, and it didn't impinge on them. So I don't think the current troubles] will impact on them at all."

McLeish confirmed he has a fully fit squad, his only dilemma whether to play 4-4-2 or 4-5-1, and how to accommodate all his best players. "There'll be times we have to be patient," he said. "The Italians are very good at keeping the ball. If we go hell for leather and play just from our hearts, then the Italians are very capable of opening us up."

03/10/2022

Yamoussoukro Basilica

Yamoussoukro Basilica, in full Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro Basilica, Roman Catholic basilica in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, that is the largest Christian church in the world. The basilica's rapid construction in 1986–89 was ostensibly paid for by Côte d'Ivoire's president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, and the building is situated in his birthplace, the city of Yamoussoukro.

The basilica's form is roughly based on that of St. Peter's in Vatican City, with a dome surmounting a colonnade that is in the form of a Latin cross. The basilica is fronted by a large plaza encircled by two more colonnades. The 272 Doric columns that support the colonnades are made of cement and rise as high as 101 feet (31 metres). The basilica's gigantic dome dwarfs that of St. Peter's and rises to a height of 489 feet (149 metres). The basilica has the capacity to hold 18,000 worshippers, while the esplanade can accommodate a crowd of 300,000.

03/10/2022

Brain & forgetting 😳

To function properly, the human brain requires the ability not only to store but also to forget: Through memory loss, unnecessary information is deleted and the nervous system retains its plasticity. A disruption of this process can lead to serious mental disorders.

Basel scientists have discovered a molecular mechanism that actively regulates the process of forgetting.

JAC

09/10/2022

09/10/2022

08/10/2022

04/10/2022

04/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

03/10/2022

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category