United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a cabinet-level department of the United States Government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material. Its responsibilities include the nation's nuclear weapons program, nuclear reactor production for the United States Navy, energy conservation, energy-related research, radioactive waste disposal, domestic energy production, it directs research in genomics. DOE sponsors more research in the physical sciences than any other U. S. federal agency, the majority of, conducted through its system of National Laboratories. The agency is administered by the United States Secretary of Energy, its headquarters are located in Southwest Washington, D. C. on Independence Avenue in the James V. Forrestal Building, named for James Forrestal, as well as in Germantown, Maryland. Former Governor of Texas Rick Perry is the current Secretary of Energy, he was confirmed by a 62 to 37 vote in the United States Senate on March 2, 2017.
In 1942, during World War II, the United States started the Manhattan Project, a project to develop the atomic bomb, under the eye of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. After the war in 1946, the Atomic Energy Commission was created to control the future of the project. Among other nuclear projects, the AEC produced fabricated uranium fuel cores at locations such as Fernald Feed Materials Production Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1974, the AEC gave way to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, tasked with regulating the nuclear power industry, the Energy Research and Development Administration, tasked to manage the nuclear weapon, naval reactor, energy development programs; the 1973 oil crisis called attention to the need to consolidate energy policy. On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, which created the Department of Energy; the new agency, which began operations on October 1, 1977, consolidated the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Commission, programs of various other agencies.
Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who served under Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam War, was appointed as the first secretary. In December 1999, the FBI was investigating. Wen Ho Lee was accused of stealing nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory for the People's Republic of China. Federal officials, including then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, publicly named Lee as a suspect before he was charged with a crime; the U. S. Congress held hearings to investigate the Department of Energy's mishandling of his case. Republican senators thought that an independent agency should be in charge of nuclear weapons and security issues, not the Department of Energy. All but one of the 59 charges against Lee were dropped because the investigation proved that the plans the Chinese obtained could not have come from Lee. Lee won a $1.6 million settlement against the federal government and news agencies. In 2001, American Solar Challenge was sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
After the 2005 race, the U. S. Department of Energy discontinued its sponsorship. Title XVII of Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorizes the DOE to issue loan guarantees to eligible projects that "avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases" and "employ new or improved technologies as compared to technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued". In loan guarantees, a conditional commitment requires to meet an equity commitment, as well as other conditions, before the loan guarantee is completed; the United States Department of Energy, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, the International Atomic Energy Agency partnered to develop and launch the World Institute for Nuclear Security in September 2008. WINS is an international non-governmental organization designed to provide a forum to share best practices in strengthening the security and safety of nuclear and radioactive materials and facilities.
On March 28, 2017 a supervisor in the Office of International Climate and Clean Energy asked staff to avoid the phrases "climate change," "emissions reduction," or "Paris Agreement" in written memos, briefings or other written communication. A DOE spokesperson denied; the department is under the control and supervision of a United States Secretary of Energy, a political appointee of the President of the United States. The Energy Secretary is assisted in managing the department by a United States Deputy Secretary of Energy appointed by the president, who assumes the duties of the secretary in his absence; the department has three under secretaries, each appointed by the president, who oversee the major areas of the department's work. The president appoints seven officials with the rank of Assistant Secretary of Energy who have line management responsibility for major organizational elements of the Department; the Energy Secretary assigns their duties. Excerpt from the Code of Federal Regulations, in Title 10: Energy:The official seal of the Department of energy "includes a green shield bisected by a gold-colored lightning bolt, on, emblazoned a gold-colored symbolic sun, oil derrick and dynamo.
It is crested atop a white rope. Both appear on a blue field surrounded by concentric circles in which the name
Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation. Sloan, first as a senior executive and as the head of the organization, helped GM grow from the 1920s through the 1950s, decades when concepts such as the annual model change, brand architecture, industrial engineering, automotive design, planned obsolescence transformed the industry, when the industry changed lifestyles and the built environment in America and throughout the world. Sloan wrote My Years with General Motors, in the 1950s. Like Henry Ford, the other "head man" of an automotive colossus, Sloan is remembered today with a complex mixture of admiration for his accomplishments, appreciation for his philanthropy, unease or reproach regarding his attitudes during the interwar period and World War II. Born in New Haven, Sloan studied electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute transferred to and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1895.
While attending MIT he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Sloan became president and owner of Hyatt Roller Bearing, a company that made roller- and ball-bearings, in 1899 when his father and another investor bought out the company from the previous owner. Oldsmobile was Hyatt's first automotive customer, with many other companies soon following suit. In 1916 Hyatt merged with other companies into United Motors Company, which soon became part of General Motors Corporation. Sloan became Vice-President of GM President, Chairman of the Board. In 1934, he established nonprofit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. GM under Sloan became famous for managing diverse operations with financial statistics such as return on investment. Raskob came to GM as an advisor to the du Pont corporation. Sloan is credited with establishing annual styling changes, from which came the concept of planned obsolescence, he established a pricing structure in which Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Cadillac, referred to as the ladder of success, did not compete with each other, buyers could be kept in the GM "family" as their buying power and preferences changed as they aged.
These concepts, along with Ford's resistance to the change in the 1920s, propelled GM to industry-sales leadership by the early 1930s, a position it retained for over 70 years. Under Sloan's direction, GM became the largest industrial enterprise the world had known. In the 1930s GM, long hostile to unionization, confronted its workforce—newly organized and ready for labor rights—in an extended contest for control. Sloan was averse to violence of the sort associated with Henry Ford, he preferred spying, investing in an internal undercover apparatus to gather information and monitor labor union activity. When workers organized the massive Flint Sit-Down Strike in 1936, Sloan found that espionage had little value in the face of such open tactics; the world's first university-based executive education program, the Sloan Fellows, started in 1931 at MIT under the sponsorship of Sloan. A Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with the charge of educating the "ideal manager", the school was renamed in Sloan's honor as the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, one of the world's premier business schools.
Additional grants established a Sloan Institute of Hospital Administration in 1955 at Cornell University-the first two-year graduate program of its type in the US, a Sloan Fellows Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1957, at London Business School in 1965. They became degree programs in 1976. Sloan's name lives on in the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Cancer Center in New York. In 1951, Sloan received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York"; the Alfred P. Sloan Museum, showcasing the evolution of the automobile industry and traveling galleries, is located in Flint, Michigan. Sloan maintained an office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, now known as the GE Building, he retired as GM chairman on April 2, 1956. His memoir and management treatise, My Years with General Motors, was more or less finished around this time, it was published in 1964. Sloan died in 1966. Sloan was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.
S. Business Hall of Fame in 1975; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic non-profit organization established by Sloan in 1934; the Foundation's programs and interests fall into the areas of science and technology, standard of living, economic performance, education and careers in science and technology. For year ending December 31, 2014 the total assets of the Sloan Foundation had a market value of about US$1.876 billion. The Sloan Foundation bankrolled the 1956 Warner Bros. cartoon Yankee Dood It, which promotes mass production. In the late 1940s, the Sloan Foundation made a grant to Harding College in Searcy, AR; the foundation wanted to fund the production of a series of short films that would extol the virtues of capitalism and the American way of life. According to Edwin Black, Sloan was one of the central, behind-the-scenes 1934 founders of the American Liberty League, a political organiz
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in several categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel established the five Nobel prizes in 1895; the prizes in Chemistry, Peace and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. The prizes are regarded as the most prestigious awards available in the fields of chemistry, peace activism and physiology or medicine. In 1968, Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, although not a Nobel Prize, has become informally known as the "Nobel Prize in Economics"; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Between 1901 and 2018, the Nobel Prizes were awarded 590 times to 935 organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 27 organizations and 908 individuals.
The prize ceremonies take place annually in Sweden. Each recipient receives a gold medal, a diploma, a sum of money, decided by the Nobel Foundation. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23-carat gold, in 18-carat green gold plated with a 24-carat gold coating; the prize is not awarded posthumously. A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, into a family of engineers, he was a chemist and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel invented ballistite; this invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.
In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. As it was Alfred's brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature; the article made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, from a cerebral haemorrhage, he was 63 years old. Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, he composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. To widespread astonishment, Nobel's last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, physiology or medicine and peace. Nobel bequeathed 94 % of 31 million SEK, to establish the five Nobel Prizes; because of skepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of Nobel's will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobel's fortune and organised the award of prizes.
Nobel's instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organizations were designated; these were Karolinska Institute on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for. In 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved. According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity; the Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobel's personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed from the shares 94% of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize; the Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organization on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.
In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Robert and Ludvig Nobel were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan, according to Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archives, it was this "decision to allow withdrawal of Alfred's money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established". Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to market the prizes internationally and to oversee informal ad
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity. It is the world's largest general scientific society, with over 120,000 members, is the publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science, which had a weekly circulation of 138,549 in 2008; the American Association for the Advancement of Science was created on September 20, 1848 at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a reformation of the Association of American Naturalists; the society chose William Charles Redfield as their first president because he had proposed the most comprehensive plans for the organization. According to the first constitution, agreed to at the September 20 meeting, the goal of the society was to promote scientific dialogue in order to allow for greater scientific collaboration.
By doing so the association aimed to use resources to conduct science with increased efficiency and allow for scientific progress at a greater rate. The association sought to increase the resources available to the scientific community through active advocacy of science. There were only 78 members; as a member of the new scientific body, Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN was one of those who attended the first 1848 meeting. At a meeting held on Friday afternoon, September 22, 1848, Redfield presided, Matthew Fontaine Maury gave a full scientific report on his Wind and Current Charts. Maury stated that hundreds of ship navigators were now sending abstract logs of their voyages to the United States Naval Observatory, he added, "Never before was such a corps of observers known." But, he pointed out to his fellow scientists, his critical need was for more "simultaneous observations." "The work," Maury stated, "is not for the benefit of any nation or age." The minutes of the AAAS meeting reveal that because of the universality of this "view on the subject, it was suggested whether the states of Christendom might not be induced to cooperate with their Navies in the undertaking.
William Barton Rogers, professor at the University of Virginia and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offered a resolution: "Resolved that a Committee of five be appointed to address a memorial to the Secretary of the Navy, requesting his further aid in procuring for Matthew Maury the use of the observations of European and other foreign navigators, for the extension and perfecting of his charts of winds and currents." The resolution was adopted and, in addition to Rogers, the following members of the association were appointed to the committee: Professor Joseph Henry of Washington. This was scientific cooperation, Maury went back to Washington with great hopes for the future. By 1860, membership increased to over 2,000; the AAAS became dormant during the American Civil War. The AAAS did not become a permanent casualty of the war. In 1866, Frederick Barnard presided over the first meeting of the resurrected AAAS at a meeting in New York City. Following the revival of the AAAS, the group had considerable growth.
The AAAS permitted all people, regardless of scientific credentials. The AAAS did, institute a policy of granting the title of "Fellow of the AAAS" to well-respected scientists within the organization; the years of peace brought the expansion of other scientific-oriented groups. The AAAS's focus on the unification of many fields of science under a single organization was in contrast to the many new science organizations founded to promote a single discipline. For example, the American Chemical Society, founded in 1876, promotes chemistry. In 1863, the US Congress established the National Academy of Sciences, another multidisciplinary sciences organization, it elects members based on the value of published works. Alan I. Leshner, AAAS CEO from 2001 until 2015, published many op-ed articles discussing how many people integrate science and religion in their lives, he has opposed the insertion of non-scientific content, such as creationism or intelligent design, into the scientific curriculum of schools.
In December 2006, the AAAS adopted an official statement on climate change, in which they stated, "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, it is a growing threat to society.... The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years; the time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now."In February 2007, the AAAS used satellite images to document human rights abuses in Burma. The next year, AAAS launched the Center for Science Diplomacy to advance both science and the broader relationships among partner countries, by promoting science diplomacy and international scientific cooperation. In 2012, AAAS published op-eds, held events on Capitol Hill and released analyses of the U. S. federal research-and-development budget, to warn that a budget sequestration would have severe consequences for scientific progress. AAAS covers various areas of sciences and engineering, it has twelve sections, each with a committee and its ch
Sheldon Cooper
Sheldon Lee Cooper, Ph. D. Sc. D. is a fictional character in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory and its spinoff series Young Sheldon, portrayed by actors Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory and Iain Armitage in Young Sheldon. For his portrayal, Parsons has won four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a TCA Award, two Critics' Choice Television Awards; the character's childhood is the focus of Young Sheldon: the series' first season is set in 1989 when nine-year-old prodigy Sheldon has skipped ahead five grades, to start high school alongside his older brother. The adult Sheldon is a senior theoretical physicist at The California Institute of Technology, for the first ten seasons of The Big Bang Theory shares an apartment with his colleague and best friend, Leonard Hofstadter. In season 10, Sheldon moves across the hall with his girlfriend Amy, in the former apartment of Leonard's wife Penny, he has a genius-level IQ, but displays a fundamental lack of social skills, a tenuous understanding of humor, difficulty recognizing irony and sarcasm in other people, although he himself employs them.
He exhibits idiosyncratic behavior and a general lack of humility and toleration. These characteristics provide the majority of the humor involving him, which has caused him to be described as the show's breakout character; some viewers have asserted that Sheldon's personality is consistent with Asperger syndrome and obsessive–compulsive disorder. Co-creator Bill Prady has stated that Sheldon's character was neither conceived nor developed with regard to any of these traits, although Parsons has said that in his opinion, Sheldon "couldn't display more traits" of Asperger's; the character of Sheldon Cooper was inspired by a computer programmer known to series co-creator Bill Prady. He is named in honor of Nobel Prize Laureate Leon Cooper. Chuck Lorre intended Johnny Galecki to play the role, but Galecki thought he would be "better suited" for the character of Leonard. Lorre said that when Jim Parsons auditioned for the role, he was "so startlingly good" that he was asked to reaudition "to make sure he hadn't gotten lucky".
Sheldon is one of four characters to appear in every episode of the series, along with Leonard and Raj. Sheldon was raised in Galveston, Texas along with his elder brother, George Jr. and fraternal twin sister, Missy, by his mother, Mary Cooper, an overtly devout Baptist. Sheldon once got his father fired when he told Mr. Hinckley, a store owner, that George was stealing from the cash register. In Young Sheldon, this is retconned: his father is a football coach, fired from his coaching position in Galveston because he disclosed that other coaches were illegally recruiting players to their school, forcing the family to return to Medford, he does drink beer, but is a loving father, trying to understand his intellectually gifted son. The only member of his family to have encouraged his work in science was his grandfather, whom he cherished and affectionately called "Pop-Pop", who died when Sheldon was five years old. Pop-Pop's loss is what caused Sheldon to despise Christmas when his Christmas wish to bring Pop-Pop back didn't come true.
Sheldon's closest relative is his maternal grandmother whom he affectionately calls "Meemaw", who in turn calls him "Moon Pie". His aunt introduced him to the world of science by giving him medical equipment, "in case his work in physics failed, he'd have a'trade' to fall back on". Sheldon was interested in science from an early age, was a child prodigy, although due to his behavioral quirks and his lack of humility about his superior intellect, he was bullied by classmates and neighbors. Sheldon entered college at the age of eleven, at age fourteen he graduated from college summa cum laude. From he worked on his doctorate, was a visiting professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, was the youngest person at the time to receive the Stevenson Award, has appeared on the cover of Journal of Physical Chemistry A. Sheldon is now a theoretical physicist doing research at Caltech, although he stated in Young Sheldon that he couldn't see himself living in California due to their carefree lifestyle.
Sheldon is described as a stereotypical "geek". He is characterized as being intelligent, detail-oriented and disturbing. Despite his intelligence, he displays childlike qualities, such as extreme stubbornness and a lack of common sense, it is claimed by Bernadette that the reason Sheldon is sometimes unpleasant is because the part of his brain that tells him it is wrong to be nasty is "getting a wedgie from the rest of his brain". Although, in season 8's "The Space Probe Disintegration", Sheldon tearfully admits to Leonard that he is aware of his peculiarities and how his behavior comes across; the first four episodes of The Big Bang Theory portray Sheldon inconsistently with respect to his characterization, in which he is depicted as rather witty and sarcastic, flirtatious towards Penny in the pilot episode: according to Prady, the character "began to evolve after episode five or so and became his own th
