1.
Fort Mason
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Fort Mason served as an Army post for more than 100 years, initially as a coastal defense site and subsequently as a military port facility. During World War II, it was the port for the Pacific campaign. Today it is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and it is a National Historic Landmark District with over 49 buildings of historic significance, spread over 1,200 acres. Fort Mason can be split into two distinct areas, the upper area, sometimes called Fort Mason, is situated on a headland and was the site of the original coastal fortifications. The lower area, Fort Mason Center, is situated close to level to the west of Upper Fort Mason. The Marina Green lies to the west of Fort Mason, while Aquatic Park is to the east, the nucleus of Fort Mason was a private property owned by John C. Frémont, the explorer of the US west, who also spearheaded the conquest of California from Mexico. Appointed a Major General in the Union army at the start of the Civil War, in 1863, the government seized the property without payment, by executive order of Lincoln, on the grounds it was needed for the war effort. Frémont would again contest the US presidency in 1864, running as the candidate of radical Republicans, the 1968 lawsuit was perhaps the last shot of a century-long legal struggle to obtain compensation for the seized realty. In 1870, the government returned property to 49 parties in the vicinity, but not to Frémont, but in 1968 the Frémont heirs complained it had failed to carry out this direction, with John Frémont then recently dead and his widow Jessie nearly 70 years old. The Civil War prompted the construction of coastal defense batteries located inside the Golden Gate. A breast-high wall of brick and mounts for six 10-inch Rodman cannons, excavation in the early 1980s uncovered the well-preserved remains of the western-half of the temporary battery, and it has now been restored to its condition during the Civil War. The fort was named Fort Mason in 1882, after Richard Barnes Mason, President Grover Cleveland established the Endicott Board in 1885 for the purpose of modernizing the nations coastal fortifications. Chaired by Secretary of War William Endicott, the board recommended new defenses at 22 U. S. seaports, as a result, an extensive series of forts, batteries, and guns were built on the harbor, including Fort Mason. The piers and sheds of Lower Fort Mason were originally built from 1912 to warehouse army supplies, by this time, the US Army began to build new bases in Hawaii, the Philippines, and various other Pacific islands. Most of the materiel for those bases was shipped through San Francisco, by 1915, the three piers together with their associated warehouse had been completed, and Fort Mason Tunnel driven under Upper Fort Mason to connect with the railroad network along the Embarcadero. With these new facilities, Fort Mason was transformed from a defense post into a logistical. The Army ferry USAT General Frank M. Coxe provided scheduled transportation from Fort Mason to the center at Fort McDowell on Angel Island up to eight times per day during the war
2.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
3.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Stewart Brand
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Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and he is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline, An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. He studied biology at Stanford University, graduating in 1960 and he was married to Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American and mathematician. As a soldier in the U. S. Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills, Brand has lived in California since the 1960s. He and his wife live on Mirene, a 64-foot -long working tugboat. Built in 1912, the boat is moored in a shipyard in Sausalito. He works in Mary Heartline, a fishing boat about 100 yards away. A favorite item of his is a table on which Otis Redding is said to have written “ The Dock of the Bay”, through engaging in scholarship and by visiting numerous Indian reservations, Brand familiarized himself with the Native Americans of the West. Native Americans have continued to be an important cultural interest, one which has continually re-emerged in Brands work in various ways, by the mid-1960s, Brand became associated with author Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. With his partner Zach Stewart, he produced the Trips Festival in San Francisco and this was one of the first venues at which the Grateful Dead performed in San Francisco. About 10,000 hippies attended, and Haight-Ashbury soon emerged as a community, tom Wolfe describes Brand in the beginning of his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In 1966, Brand campaigned to have NASA release the satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space. He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each asking, Why havent we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet, during this campaign, Brand met Richard Buckminster Fuller, who offered to help Brand with his projects. In 1967, a satellite, ATS-3, took the photo, Brand thought the image of our planet would be a powerful symbol. It adorned the first edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, later in 1968, a NASA astronaut took an Earth photo, Earthrise, from Moon orbit, which became the front image of the spring 1969 edition of the Catalog. 1970 saw the first celebration of Earth Day, during a 2003 interview, Brand explained that the image gave the sense that Earth’s an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it’s so graphic, this blue, white, green. During the late 1960s and early 1970s about 10 million Americans were involved in living communally, Brand and his wife Lois travelled to communes in a 1963 Dodge truck known as the Whole Earth Truck Store, which moved to a storefront in Menlo Park, California
6.
Brian Eno
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Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. He is best known for his work in rock, ambient, pop. He has been described as one of musics most influential. Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at art school in the late 1960s before joining glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesizer player in 1971. He took part in frequent collaborations with such as Robert Fripp, Cluster, David Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy. In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record albums, collaborate, and produce for other artists, including U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, James, Grace Jones. He continues to release music, produce, and write, the unusual surname Eno, long established in Suffolk, derives from the French Huguenot surname Hennot. Maria had already had a daughter, and together William and Maria would have two children, Roger and Arlette. In school, Eno used a tape recorder as an instrument and experimented with his first, sometimes improvisational. From that collaboration, he involved in Cornelius Cardews Scratch Orchestra. The first released recording in which Eno played is the Deutsche Grammophon edition of Cardews The Great Learning, Another early recording was the Berlin Horse soundtrack, by Malcom Le Grice, a nine-minute,2 ×16 mm-double-projection, released in 1970 and presented in 1971. He then progressed to appearing on stage as a member of the group. He quit the band on completing the tour for the bands second album, For Your Pleasure, because of disagreements with lead singer Bryan Ferry. If Id walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, during his period with Roxy Music, and for his first three solo albums, he was credited on records only as Eno. Eno embarked on a career almost immediately. Between 1973 and 1977 he created four albums of electronically inflected art pop, Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, and Before and After Science. Tiger Mountain contains the galloping Third Uncle, one of Enos best-known songs and these four albums were remastered and reissued in 2004 by Virgins Astralwerks label. Due to Enos decision not to add any extra tracks of the original material, in 1972, Eno and Robert Fripp developed the Frippertronics tape delay system, a year later, the pair released the proto-ambient album
7.
Roman numerals
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The numeric system represented by Roman numerals originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, Roman numerals, as used today, are based on seven symbols, The use of Roman numerals continued long after the decline of the Roman Empire. The numbers 1 to 10 are usually expressed in Roman numerals as follows, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, Numbers are formed by combining symbols and adding the values, so II is two and XIII is thirteen. Symbols are placed left to right in order of value. Named after the year of its release,2014 as MMXIV, the year of the games of the XXII Olympic Winter Games The standard forms described above reflect typical modern usage rather than a universally accepted convention. Usage in ancient Rome varied greatly and remained inconsistent in medieval, Roman inscriptions, especially in official contexts, seem to show a preference for additive forms such as IIII and VIIII instead of subtractive forms such as IV and IX. Both methods appear in documents from the Roman era, even within the same document, double subtractives also occur, such as XIIX or even IIXX instead of XVIII. Sometimes V and L are not used, with such as IIIIII. Such variation and inconsistency continued through the period and into modern times. Clock faces that use Roman numerals normally show IIII for four o’clock but IX for nine o’clock, however, this is far from universal, for example, the clock on the Palace of Westminster in London uses IV. Similarly, at the beginning of the 20th century, different representations of 900 appeared in several inscribed dates. For instance,1910 is shown on Admiralty Arch, London, as MDCCCCX rather than MCMX, although Roman numerals came to be written with letters of the Roman alphabet, they were originally independent symbols. The Etruscans, for example, used
8.
Danny Hillis
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William Daniel Danny Hillis is an American inventor, engineer, mathematician, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a company developed the Connection Machine. He is also co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, Applied Minds, Metaweb Technologies, Applied Proteomics and he is Judge Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Southern California. Hillis was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1956 and his father, William Hillis, was a US Air Force epidemiologist studying hepatitis in Africa and relocated with his family through Rwanda, Burundi, Republic of the Congo, and Kenya. He spent a part of his childhood in Calcutta, India when his father was a visiting faculty at ISI. During these years the young Hillis was home schooled by his mother Argye Briggs Hillis, a biostatistician, and developed an early appreciation for mathematics and biology. His younger brother is David Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas at Austin, and his sister is Argye E. Hillis. In 1978 Hillis graduated from MIT with a BS degree in mathematics, followed in 1981 with an MS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, during this time Hillis worked at the MIT Logo Laboratory developing computer hardware and software for children. He designed computer-oriented toys and games for the Milton Bradley Company and he also built a digital computer composed of Tinkertoys that is on display at the Museum of Science, Boston. Hillis major research, however, was parallel computing. Hillis designed the Connection Machine, a supercomputer, in 1983 Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation to produce. In 1985, continuing research, Hillis received a PhD in EECS from MIT under doctoral advisers Gerald Jay Sussman, Marvin Minsky. The thesis won the ACM Distinguished Dissertation prize for 1985, Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation in 1983 while doing his doctoral work at MIT. The company was to develop Hillis Connection Machine design into commercial parallel supercomputers, the information is in the connection between a lot of very simple parallel units working together. So if we built a computer that was more along that system of organization and he even recruited Richard Feynman to spend his summers there. In 1990, Thinking Machines was the leader in parallel supercomputers. During 1994, however, Thinking Machines filed for bankruptcy, I remember listening to Walt Disney on television describing the Imagineers who designed Disneyland. I decided then that someday I would be an Imagineer, later, I became interested in a different kind of magic – the magic of computers
9.
Palace of Fine Arts
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One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is still situated on its original site. It was rebuilt in 1965, and renovation of the lagoon, walkways, the Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Ancient Greek architecture in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time. For a time the Palace housed an art exhibit, and during the Great Depression. Artists were commissioned to replace the decayed Robert Reid murals on the ceiling of the rotunda, from 1934 to 1942 the exhibition hall was home to eighteen lighted tennis courts. During World War II it was requisitioned by the military for storage of trucks, at the end of the war, when the United Nations was created in San Francisco, limousines used by the worlds statesmen came from a motor pool there. While the Palace had been saved from demolition, its structure was not stable, as a result of the construction and vandalism, by the 1950s the simulated ruin was in fact a crumbling ruin. In 1964, the original Palace was completely demolished, with only the structure of the exhibit hall left standing. The buildings were reconstructed in permanent, light-weight, poured-in-place concrete. All the decorations and sculpture were constructed anew, the only changes were the absence of the murals in the dome, two end pylons of the colonnade, and the original ornamentation of the exhibit hall. In 1969, the former Exhibit Hall became home to the Exploratorium interactive museum, in January 2013, the Exploratorium closed in preparation for its permanent move to the Embarcadero. Today, Australian eucalyptus trees fringe the eastern shore of the lagoon, many forms of wildlife have made their home there including swans, ducks, geese, turtles, frogs, and raccoons. Built around an artificial lagoon, the Palace of Fine Arts is composed of a wide,1,100 ft pergola around a central rotunda situated by the water. Ornamentation includes Bruno Louis Zimms three repeating panels around the entablature of the rotunda, representing The Struggle for the Beautiful, while Ulric Ellerhusen supplied the weeping women atop the colonnade and the sculptured frieze and allegorical figures representing Contemplation, Wonderment and Meditation. The underside of the Palace rotundas dome features eight large insets, four depicted the conception and birth of Art, its commitment to the Earth, its progress and acceptance by the human intellect, and four the golds of California. The Palace of Fine Arts was not the building from the exposition to survive demolition. The Japanese Tea House was purchased in 1915 by land baron E. D, swift and was transported by barge down the Bay to Belmont, California where it stands to this day. The Wisconsin and Virginia buildings were relocated to Marin County, the Ohio building was shipped to San Mateo County, where it survived until the 1950s. The Column of Progress stood for a decade after the close of the Exhibition, at the close of the exposition, the French government granted Alma Spreckels permission to construct a permanent replica of the French Pavilion, but World War I delayed the groundbreaking until 1921
10.
Clock of the Long Now
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The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10, 000-year clock, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The project to build it is part of the Long Now Foundation, the project was conceived by Danny Hillis in 1986. The first prototype of the clock began working on December 31,1999, at midnight on New Years Eve, the date indicator changed from 01999 to 02000, and the chime struck twice. The two-meter prototype is on display at the Science Museum in London, as of December 2007, two more recent prototypes are on display at The Long Now Museum & Store at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The manufacture and site construction of the first full-scale prototype clock is being funded by Jeff Bezos Bezos Expeditions, with $42 million, and is on land which Bezos owns in Texas. In the words of Stewart Brand, a board member of the foundation, Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well-engineered. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think, the basic design principles and requirements for the clock are, Longevity, The clock should be accurate even after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts that might be looted. Maintainability, Future generations should be able to keep the working, if necessary. Transparency, The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it, evolvability, It should be possible to improve the clock over time. Scalability, To ensure that the large clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built. No clock can have a lifetime of 10,000 years. With continued care and maintenance the Clock of the Long Now could reasonably be expected to display the time for 10,000 years. Whether a clock would actually receive continued care and maintenance for such a time is debatable. Hillis chose the 10, 000-year goal to be just within the limits of plausibility, many options were considered for the power source of the clock, but most were rejected due to their inability to meet the requirements. For example, nuclear power and solar power systems would violate the principles of transparency, in the end, Hillis decided to require regular human winding of a falling weight design for updating the clock face because the clock design already assumes regular human maintenance. The timing mechanism for such a long lasting clock needs to be reliable, the options considered but rejected as sources of timing for the clock included, Most of these methods are inaccurate, but are reliable. Other methods are accurate but opaque, as a compromise the clock will use an unreliable but accurate timer to adjust an inaccurate but reliable timer, creating a phase-locked loop
11.
Rosetta Project
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Its goal is a meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,500 languages. Some of these languages have fewer than one thousand speakers left, others are considered to be dying out because government centralization and globalization are increasing the prevalence of English and other major languages. The project is creating this broad language archive through an open contribution, fifty to ninety percent of the worlds languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation. Much linguistic description, especially the description of languages with few speakers, the project is also organising formal archive research groups at Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, the American Library of Congress, and the American Summer Institute of Linguistics. A Version 1.0 of the HD-Rosetta disc was completed on November 3,2008, the disc contains over 13,000 pages of language documentation, which can be read after magnifying by 650 times with a microscope. As of 2011, a version of the disk is planned. The online library, however, continues to grow
12.
Clock
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A clock is an instrument to measure, keep, and indicate time. The word clock is derived from the Celtic words clagan and clocca meaning bell, a silent instrument missing such a striking mechanism has traditionally been known as a timepiece. In general usage today a clock refers to any device for measuring and displaying the time, Watches and other timepieces that can be carried on ones person are often distinguished from clocks. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units, the day, the lunar month. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia, a sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, an example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments, spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, clockmaking flourished, the next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock. A major stimulus to improving the accuracy and reliability of clocks was the importance of precise time-keeping for navigation, the electric clock was patented in 1840. The development of electronics in the 20th century led to clocks with no clockwork parts at all, the timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object that vibrates or oscillates at a particular frequency. This object can be a pendulum, a fork, a quartz crystal. Analog clocks usually indicate time using angles, Digital clocks display a numeric representation of time. Two numeric display formats are used on digital clocks, 24-hour notation. Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays, for convenience, distance, telephony or blindness, auditory clocks present the time as sounds. There are also clocks for the blind that have displays that can be read by using the sense of touch, some of these are similar to normal analog displays, but are constructed so the hands can be felt without damaging them. The evolution of the technology of clocks continues today, the study of timekeeping is known as horology. The apparent position of the Sun in the sky moves over the course of a day, shadows cast by stationary objects move correspondingly, so their positions can be used to indicate the time of day. A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface, sundials can be horizontal, vertical, or in other orientations
13.
Civilization
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Historically, a civilization was a so-called advanced culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure, Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings. The earlier neolithic technology and lifestyle was established first in the Middle East, and later in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China, similar pre-civilized neolithic revolutions also began independently from 7,000 BCE in such places as northwestern South America and Mesoamerica. These were among the six civilizations worldwide that arose independently, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE, with civilizations developing from 6,500 years ago. Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitist Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various cradles from around 3300 BCE. Chalcolithic civilizations, as defined above, also developed in Pre-Columbian Americas and, despite an early start in Egypt, Axum and Kush, the English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé, from Latin civilis, related to civis and civitas. The fundamental treatise is Norbert Eliass The Civilizing Process, which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period, in The Philosophy of Civilization, Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions, one purely material and the other material and ethical. Adjectives like civility developed in the mid-16th century, the abstract noun civilization, meaning civilized condition, came in the 1760s, again from French. The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French revolution, civilization was used in the singular, never in the plural and this is still the case in French. The use of civilizations as a noun was in occasional use in the 19th century. Only in this sense does it become possible to speak of a medieval civilization. Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement, one historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and this sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by conscious, rational, deliberative acts, but a kind of pre-rational folk spirit. Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to vices of social life such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism, Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Andrew Nikiforuk argues that civilizations relied on shackled human muscle and it took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities and considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations. All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation
14.
Looting
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The term is also used in a broader sense to describe egregious instances of theft and embezzlement, such as the plundering of private or public assets by governments. The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, looting by a victorious army during war has been common practice throughout recorded history. For foot soldiers, it was viewed as a way to supplement their meagre income and was part of the celebration of victory. To rob them of their wealth, in other pre-modern societies, objects made of precious metals were the preferred target of war looting, largely because of their easy portability. In many cases looting was an opportunity to obtain treasures that otherwise would not have been obtainable, since the 18th century, works of art have increasingly become a popular target. In the 1930s and even more so during World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in large scale and organized looting of art, looting, combined with poor military discipline, has occasionally been an armys downfall. In other cases, for example the Wahhabi sack of Karbala, not all looters in wartime are conquerors, the looting of Vistula Land by its retreating defenders in 1915 was among the factors sapping the loyalty of Poland in World War I. Local civilians can also take advantage of a breakdown of order to loot public and private property, the novel War and Peace describes widespread looting by Moscows citizens before Napoleons troops enter the town, and looting by French troops elsewhere. Looting can also refer to antiquities formerly removed from countries by outsiders, other examples include the obelisks of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, in the, Pharaoh Ptolemy IX. In the aftermath of the Second World War Soviet forces systematically plundered the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and they sent valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure and whole factories to the Soviet Union. Especially during natural disasters, some find themselves forced to take what is not theirs in order to survive. How to respond to this, and where the line between unnecessary looting and necessary scavenging lies, is often a dilemma for governments, in other cases, looting may be tolerated or even encouraged by governments for political or other reasons. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 explicitly prohibits the looting of property during wartime. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 obliges military forces not only to avoid destruction of enemy property, theoretically, to prevent such looting, unclaimed property is moved to the custody of the Custodian of Enemy Property, to be handled until the return to its owner. Around the same time of the Hyksos invasion and occupation of Egypt, in Genesis 15,14, the despoliation is an act of justifiable vengeance upon the oppressors of Israel. Yet in Exodus, God uses the plagues as an act of mercy to bring a knowledge of himself to Israel, Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and to the ends of the earth. See Hyksos Iconoclasm and Genesis 13,2 and Genesis 15,14 and Exodus 12,36 Following the death of Valentinian III in 455, in 870 AD, the Byzantine city of Melite was captured by the Aghlabids under Sawāda Ibn Muḥammad. The city was destroyed, its churches looted and its population massacred, marble from the citys churches was used to build the castle of Sousse
15.
Science Museum, London
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The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and today is one of the major tourist attractions. Like other publicly funded museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission. Temporary exhibitions, however, may incur an admission fee and it is part of the Science Museum Group, having merged with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in 2012. It included a collection of machinery which became the Museum of Patents in 1858, and this collection contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now the Science Museum. In 1883, the contents of the Patent Office Museum were transferred to the South Kensington Museum, in 1885, the Science Collections were renamed the Science Museum and in 1893 a separate director was appointed. The Art Collections were renamed the Art Museum, which became the Victoria. When Queen Victoria laid the stone for the new building for the Art Museum, she stipulated that the museum be renamed after herself. On 26 June 1909 the Science Museum, as an independent entity, the Science Museums present quarters, designed by Sir Richard Allison, were opened to the public in stages over the period 1919–28. This building was known as the East Block, construction of which began in 1913, as the name suggests it was intended to be the first building of a much larger project, which was never realized. It also contains hundreds of interactive exhibits, a recent addition is the IMAX 3D Cinema showing science and nature documentaries, most of them in 3-D, and the Wellcome Wing which focuses on digital technology. Entrance has been free since 1 December 2001, the museum houses some of the many objects collected by Henry Wellcome around a medical theme. The fourth floor exhibit is called Glimpses of Medical History, with reconstructions, the fifth floor gallery is called Science and the Art of Medicine, with exhibits of medical instruments and practices from ancient days and from many countries. The collection is strong in clinical medicine, biosciences and public health, the museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine. The Science Museum has a library, and until the 1960s was Britains National Library for Science, Medicine. It holds runs of periodicals, early books and manuscripts, and is used by scholars worldwide and it was, for a number of years, run in conjunction with the Library of Imperial College, but in 2007 the Library was divided over two sites. The Imperial College library catalogue search system now informs searchers that volumes formerly held there are Available at Science Museum Library Swindon Currently unavailable, a new Research Centre with library facilities is promised for late 2015 but is unlikely to have book stacks nearby. The Science Museums medical collections have a scope and coverage
16.
Van Horn, Texas
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Van Horn is a town in and the county seat of Culberson County, Texas, in the United States. According to the 2010 census, Van Horn had a population of 2,063 and it is the westernmost incorporated community in the Central Time Zone part of the state of Texas. Greyhound Lines has a stop in the town, by Wendys, Van Horn is located in southwestern Culberson County at 31°2′33″N 104°49′59″W. Interstate 10 passes through the town, leading east 120 miles to Fort Stockton, Van Horn is the western terminus of U. S. Route 90, from Van Horn it leads southeast 73 miles to Marfa. Texas State Highway 54 leads north from Van Horn 65 miles to Pine Springs, according to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.8 square miles, all land. Threemile Peak, elevation 4,868 feet, rises to the northwest overlooking the town, Van Horn is the westernmost town in the U. S. Anglo-Texan settlement began in the late 1850s and early 1860s supportive of the San Antonio-El Paso Overland Mail route, Lt. Van Horns command was relatively short-lived, as the post was seized by Confederate forces in 1861 and Lt. Van Horn taken prisoner. Settlement was further stimulated by the construction of the Texas and Pacific Railway in 1881, the town has several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places including the First Presbyterian Church, built in 1901. As of the census of 2000, there were 2,435 people,834 households, the population density was 846.9 people per square mile. There were 976 housing units at a density of 339.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 64. 60% White,0. 66% African American,0. 57% Native American,0. 57% Asian,31. 46% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 78. 60% of the population. Van Horn is served by the Culberson County-Allamoore Independent School District and is home to the Van Horn High School Eagles, the United States Postal Service operates the Van Horn Post Office. As of 2008, Blue Origin had been expected to start commercial operations as early as 2010, in early 2010, NASA awarded Blue Origin US$3.7 million to work on an advanced technology, which detaches a crew cabin from its launcher if the shuttle malfunctions. As of August 2016, Blue Origin was still conducting test flights with plans to begin flying piloted tests in 2017 and paying customers in 2018
17.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
18.
Native speaker
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A first language is a language that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. If there are multiple L1, the designation first language is used for the L1 spoken the best or the one that is the basis for sociolinguistic identity. In some countries, the native language or mother tongue refers to the language of ones ethnic group rather than ones first language. Children brought up speaking more than one language can have more than one native language, by contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than ones first language. Native speakers are considered to be an authority on their language because of their natural acquisition process regarding the language. That is achieved by interaction with the language and speakers of the language. Native speakers will not necessarily be knowledgeable about every rule of the language. Sometimes, the mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learned as a child at home. Children growing up in homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language. It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a dominant language. According to Ivan Illich, the mother tongue was first used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin. That is, the mother the Church introduced this term. J. R. R. Tolkien, in his 1955 lecture English and Welsh, on 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. The first language of a child is part of the personal, social and cultural identity, another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. It is basically responsible for differentiating the linguistic competence of acting and that has implications on the education of non-native speakers. The topic of native speaker also gives way to discussion about what exactly bilingualism is, one definition is that a person is bilingual by being equally proficient in both languages. A person who grows up speaking English and begins learning Spanish for four years is not necessarily bilingual unless he speaks the two languages with equal fluency, one can have two or more native languages, thus being a native bilingual or indeed multilingual. The order in which languages are learned is not necessarily the order of proficiency
19.
Gambling
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Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present, consideration, chance and prize, the term gaming in this context typically refers to instances in which the activity has been specifically permitted by law. However, this distinction is not universally observed in the English-speaking world, for instance, in the United Kingdom, the regulator of gambling activities is called the Gambling Commission. Gambling is also an international commercial activity, with the legal gambling market totaling an estimated $335 billion in 2009. In other forms, gambling can be conducted with materials which have a value, many popular games played in modern casinos originate from Europe and China. Games such as craps, baccarat, roulette, and blackjack originate from different areas of Europe, a version of keno, an ancient Chinese lottery game, is played in casinos around the world. In addition, pai gow poker, a hybrid between pai gow and poker is also played, many jurisdictions, local as well as national, either ban gambling or heavily control it by licensing the vendors. Such regulation generally leads to gambling tourism and illegal gambling in the areas where it is not allowed, there is generally legislation requiring that the odds in gaming devices are statistically random, to prevent manufacturers from making some high-payoff results impossible. Since these high-payoffs have very low probability, a bias can quite easily be missed unless the odds are checked carefully. Most jurisdictions that allow gambling require participants to be above a certain age, in some jurisdictions, the gambling age differs depending on the type of gambling. For example, in many American states one must be over 21 to enter a casino, E. g. Nonetheless, both insurance and gambling contracts are typically considered aleatory contracts under most legal systems, though they are subject to different types of regulation. Under common law, particularly English Law, a contract may not give a casino bona fide purchaser status. For case law on recovery of gambling losses where the loser had stolen the funds see Rights of owner of money as against one who won it in gambling transaction from thief. This was a plot point in a Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Singing Skirt. Religious perspectives on gambling have been mixed, ancient Hindu poems like the Gamblers Lament and the Mahabharata testify to the popularity of gambling among ancient Indians. However, the text Arthashastra recommends taxation and control of gambling, ancient Jewish authorities frowned on gambling, even disqualifying professional gamblers from testifying in court. For these social and religious reasons, most legal jurisdictions limit gambling, in at least one case, the same bishop opposing a casino has sold land to be used for its construction. Although different interpretations of law exist in the Muslim world
20.
Fixed-wing aircraft
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A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft, such as an aeroplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the vehicles forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft, in which the form a rotor mounted on a spinning shaft. Glider fixed-wing aircraft, including free-flying gliders of various kinds and tethered kites, powered fixed-wing aircraft that gain forward thrust from an engine include powered paragliders, powered hang gliders and some ground effect vehicles. The wings of an aircraft are not necessarily rigid, kites, hang-gliders, variable-sweep wing aircraft. Most fixed-wing aircraft are flown by a pilot on board the aircraft, kites were used approximately 2,800 years ago in China, where materials ideal for kite building were readily available. Some authors hold that leaf kites were being flown much earlier in what is now Indonesia, by at least 549 AD paper kites were being flown, as it was recorded in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources list other uses of kites for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communication for military operations. Stories of kites were brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, although they were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries kites were being used as vehicles for scientific research. This machine may have been suspended for its flight, some of the earliest recorded attempts with gliders were those by the 9th-century poet Abbas Ibn Firnas and the 11th-century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury, both experiments injured their pilots. In 1799, Sir George Cayley set forth the concept of the aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion. Cayley was building and flying models of fixed-wing aircraft as early as 1803, in 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first powered flight, by having his glider LAlbatros artificiel pulled by a horse on a beach. In 1884, the American John J. Montgomery made controlled flights in a glider as a part of a series of gliders built between 1883-1886, other aviators who made similar flights at that time were Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher, and Octave Chanute. In the 1890s, Lawrence Hargrave conducted research on wing structures and his box kite designs were widely adopted. Although he also developed a type of aircraft engine, he did not create. Sir Hiram Maxim built a craft that weighed 3.5 tons, in 1894, his machine was tested with overhead rails to prevent it from rising. The test showed that it had enough lift to take off, the craft was uncontrollable, which Maxim, it is presumed, realized, because he subsequently abandoned work on it. By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods, the flight was certified by the FAI. This was the first controlled flight, to be officially recognised, the Bleriot VIII design of 1908 was an early aircraft design that had the modern monoplane tractor configuration
21.
Peak oil
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Peak oil, an event based on M. King Hubberts theory, is the point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which it is expected to enter terminal decline. Peak oil theory is based on the rise, peak, fall. It is often confused with oil depletion, however, peak oil is the point of production, while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves. Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Predictions vary greatly as to exactly these negative effects would be. Oil production forecasts on which predictions of peak oil are based are made within a range which includes optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. Pessimistic predictions of future oil production made after 2007 stated either that the peak had already occurred, that oil production was on the cusp of the peak, or that it would occur shortly. Hubberts original prediction that US peak oil would be in about 1970 seemed accurate for a time, in addition, Hubberts original predictions for world peak oil production proved premature. The idea that the rate of oil production would peak and irreversibly decline is an old one, in 1919, David White, chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey, wrote of US petroleum. The peak of production will soon be passed, possibly within 3 years, in 1953, Eugene Ayers, a researcher for Gulf Oil, projected that if US ultimate recoverable oil reserves were 100 billion barrels, then production in the US would peak no later than 1960. If ultimate recoverable were to be as high as 200 billion barrels, likewise for the world, he projected a peak somewhere between 1985 and 2000. Ayers made his projections without a mathematical model, King Hubbert used statistical modelling in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1971. Hubbert used a semi-logistical curved model and he assumed the production rate of a limited resource would follow a roughly symmetrical distribution. Depending on the limits of exploitability and market pressures, the rise or decline of production over time might be sharper or more stable. That model and its variants are now called Hubbert peak theory, they have used to describe and predict the peak and decline of production from regions, countries. The same theory has also applied to other limited-resource production. In a 2006 analysis of Hubbert theory, it was noted that uncertainty in real world oil production amounts, by comparing the fit of various other models, it was found that Hubberts methods yielded the closest fit over all, but that none of the models were very accurate. In 1956 Hubbert himself recommended using a family of possible production curves when predicting a production peak, more recently, the term peak oil was popularized by Colin Campbell and Kjell Aleklett in 2002 when they helped form the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. In his publications, Hubbert used the peak production rate
22.
Print on demand
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Print on demand is a printing technology and business process in which book copies do not print until the company receives an order, allowing prints of singular or small quantities. Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing to POD service providers, many academic publishers, including university presses, use POD services to maintain large backlists, some use POD for all of their publications. Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older, before the introduction of digital printing technology, production of small numbers of publications had many limitations. Large print jobs were not a problem, but small numbers of printed pages were typically during the early 20th century produced using stencils and these produced printed pages of inferior quality to a book, cheaply and reasonably fast. By about 1950, electrostatic copiers were available to make paper master plates for offset duplicating machines, from about 1960 copying onto plain paper became possible for photocopy machines to make multiple good-quality copies of a monochrome original. As technology advanced it became possible to store text in digital form—- paper tape, punched cards readable by digital computer, magnetic mass storage, etc. Print on demand with digital technology is a way to print items for a fixed cost per copy, regardless of the size of the order. While the unit price of each copy is greater than with offset printing. POD has other business benefits besides lesser costs, Technical set-up is usually quicker than for offset printing, large inventories of a book or print material do not need to be kept in stock, reducing storage, handling costs, and inventory accounting costs. There is little or no waste from unsold products and these advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books and prints and can result in increased choice for consumers. However, the risks for the publisher can also mean that quality control is less rigorous than usual. Digital technology is suited to publish small print jobs of posters when they are needed. The introduction of inks and media for large format inkjet printers has allowed artists. This was brought about after a fire destroyed £3 million worth of stock, the introduction of POD technologies and business-models has created a range of new book-creation and publishing opportunities. There are three categories of offerings. POD creats a new category of publishing company that services, usually for a fee. These services generally include printing and shipping each individual book ordered, handling royalties, the initial investment required for POD services is less than for offset printing. Other services may also be available, including formatting, proofreading, and editing, such companies are suitable for authors prepared to design and promote their work themselves, with minimal assistance and at minimal cost
23.
Modem
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A modem is a network hardware device that modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulates signals to decode the transmitted information. The goal is attempting to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily, modems can be used with any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second. Modems can also be classified by their rate, measured in baud. The baud unit denotes symbols per second, or the number of times per second the modem sends a new signal. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency shift keying with two frequencies, corresponding to two distinct symbols, to carry 300 bits per second using 300 baud. By contrast, the original ITU V.22 standard, which could transmit and receive four distinct symbols, news wire services in the 1920s used multiplex devices that satisfied the definition of a modem. However, the function was incidental to the multiplexing function, so they are not commonly included in the history of modems. S. SAGE modems were described by AT&Ts Bell Labs as conforming to their newly published Bell 101 dataset standard, while they ran on dedicated telephone lines, the devices at each end were no different from commercial acoustically coupled Bell 101,110 baud modems. The 201A and 201B Data-Phones were synchronous modems using two-bit-per-baud phase-shift keying, the famous Bell 103A dataset standard was also introduced by AT&T in 1962. It provided full-duplex service at 300 bit/s over normal phone lines, frequency-shift keying was used, with the call originator transmitting at 1,070 or 1,270 Hz and the answering modem transmitting at 2,025 or 2,225 Hz. The readily available 103A2 gave an important boost to the use of remote low-speed terminals such as the Teletype Model 33 ASR and KSR, AT&T reduced modem costs by introducing the originate-only 113D and the answer-only 113B/C modems. For many years, the Bell System maintained a monopoly on the use of its phone lines, however, the seminal Hush-a-Phone v. FCC case of 1956 concluded it was within the FCCs jurisdiction to regulate the operation of the Bell System. The FCC found that as long as a device was not electronically attached to the system and this led to a number of devices that mechanically connected to the phone through a standard handset. Since most handsets were supplied by Western Electric and thus of a standard design and this type of connection was used for many devices, such as answering machines. Acoustically coupled Bell 103A-compatible 300 bit/s modems were common during the 1970s, well-known models included the Novation CAT and the Anderson-Jacobson, the latter spun off from an in-house project at Stanford Research Institute. An even lower-cost option was the Pennywhistle modem, designed to be built using parts from electronics scrap, in December 1972, Vadic introduced the VA3400, notable for full-duplex operation at 1,200 bit/s over the phone network. Like the 103A, it used different frequency bands for transmit, in November 1976, AT&T introduced the 212A modem to compete with Vadic
24.
Qubit
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In quantum computing, a qubit or quantum bit is a unit of quantum information—the quantum analogue of the classical bit. A qubit is a two-state quantum-mechanical system, such as the polarization of a single photon, in a classical system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However, quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a superposition of states at the same time, a property that is fundamental to quantum computing. The concept of the qubit was unknowingly introduced by Stephen Wiesner in 1983, in his proposal for quantum money, the coining of the term qubit is attributed to Benjamin Schumacher. The paper describes a way of compressing states emitted by a source of information so that they require fewer physical resources to store. This procedure is now known as Schumacher compression, the bit is the basic unit of information. It is used to represent information by computers, an analogy to this is a light switch—its off position can be thought of as 0 and its on position as 1. A qubit has a few similarities to a bit, but is overall very different. There are two possible outcomes for the measurement of a qubit—usually 0 and 1, like a bit, the difference is that whereas the state of a bit is either 0 or 1, the state of a qubit can also be a superposition of both. It is possible to encode one bit in one qubit. However, a qubit can hold more information, e. g. up to two bits using superdense coding. For a system of n components, a description of its state in classical physics requires only n bits. The two states in which a qubit may be measured are known as basis states, as is the tradition with any sort of quantum states, they are represented by Dirac—or bra–ket—notation. This means that the two basis states are conventionally written as |0 ⟩ and |1 ⟩. A pure qubit state is a superposition of the basis states. When we measure this qubit in the basis, the probability of outcome |0 ⟩ is | α |2. Because the absolute squares of the amplitudes equate to probabilities, it follows that α and β must be constrained by the equation | α |2 + | β |2 =1. It might at first sight seem that there should be four degrees of freedom, as α and β are complex numbers with two degrees of freedom each
25.
Quantum computing
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Quantum computing studies theoretical computation systems that make direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from binary digital electronic computers based on transistors, a quantum Turing machine is a theoretical model of such a computer, and is also known as the universal quantum computer. The field of computing was initiated by the work of Paul Benioff and Yuri Manin in 1980, Richard Feynman in 1982. A quantum computer with spins as quantum bits was also formulated for use as a quantum space–time in 1968, there exist quantum algorithms, such as Simons algorithm, that run faster than any possible probabilistic classical algorithm. A classical computer could in principle simulate a quantum algorithm, as quantum computation does not violate the Church–Turing thesis, on the other hand, quantum computers may be able to efficiently solve problems which are not practically feasible on classical computers. A classical computer has a made up of bits, where each bit is represented by either a one or a zero. A quantum computer maintains a sequence of qubits, in general, a quantum computer with n qubits can be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2 n different states simultaneously. A quantum computer operates by setting the qubits in a drift that represents the problem at hand. The sequence of gates to be applied is called a quantum algorithm, the calculation ends with a measurement, collapsing the system of qubits into one of the 2 n pure states, where each qubit is zero or one, decomposing into a classical state. The outcome can therefore be at most n classical bits of information, Quantum algorithms are often probabilistic, in that they provide the correct solution only with a certain known probability. Note that the term non-deterministic computing must not be used in case to mean probabilistic. An example of an implementation of qubits of a computer could start with the use of particles with two spin states, down and up. This is true because any such system can be mapped onto an effective spin-1/2 system, a quantum computer with a given number of qubits is fundamentally different from a classical computer composed of the same number of classical bits. This means that when the state of the qubits is measured. To better understand this point, consider a classical computer that operates on a three-bit register, if there is no uncertainty over its state, then it is in exactly one of these states with probability 1. However, if it is a computer, then there is a possibility of it being in any one of a number of different states. The state of a quantum computer is similarly described by an eight-dimensional vector. Here, however, the coefficients a k are complex numbers, and it is the sum of the squares of the absolute values, ∑ i | a i |2
26.
San Francisco Bay Area
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The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco. The Bay Areas nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California, the fifth-largest in the United States, the Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 Companies in the United States, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The eastern side of the bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is known locally as the East Bay, the inner East Bay is more densely populated, with generally older buildings, and a more ethnically diverse population. The word Lamorinda was coined by combining the names of the cities it includes, Lafayette, Moraga, walnut Creek is situated east of Lamorinda and north of the San Ramon Valley and, together with Concord, Martinez, and Pleasant Hill comprises Central Contra Costa County. The cities of Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, Oakley and the areas surrounding them comprise East Contra Costa County. The Tri-Valley consists of the Amador, the Livermore, and the San Ramon Valleys, dublin and Pleasanton comprise the Amador Valley, Livermore lies in the Livermore Valley, and the San Ramon Valley consists of Alamo, Danville, Diablo and its namesake, San Ramon. The outer East Bay is connected to the inner East Bay by BART, Interstate 580 to the south, and State Routes State Route 4 to the north, the outer East Bays infrastructure was mostly built up after World War II. This area remains largely white demographically, although the Hispanic and Filipino populations have grown significantly over the past 2–3 decades, the region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known locally as the North Bay. This area encompasses Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County, the city of Fairfield, being part of Solano County, is often considered the easternmost city of the North Bay. With few exceptions, this region is affluent, Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the state. The North Bay is relatively rural compared to the remainder of the Bay Area, with areas of undeveloped open space, farmland. Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is the North Bays largest city, with a population of 167,815 and a Metropolitan Statistical Area population of 466,891, making it the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. The North Bay is the section of the Bay Area that is not currently served by a commuter rail service. The area from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley, geographically part of the San Francisco Peninsula, is known locally as The Peninsula, many of these families are of foreign background and have significantly contributed to the diversity of the area. Whereas the term peninsula technically refers to the entire geographical San Franciscan Peninsula, in local terms, San Francisco is surrounded by water on three sides, the north, east, and west. The city squeezes roughly 870,000 people in under 47 square miles, on any given day, there can be as many as 1 million people in the city because of the commuting population and tourism
27.
Environmental movement
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The environmental movement, also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy, in its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights. The environmental movement is a movement, represented by a range of organizations, from the large to grassroots. Due to its membership, varying and strong beliefs, and occasionally speculative nature. The movement also encompasses some other movements with a specific focus. At its broadest, the movement includes private citizens, professionals, religious devotees, politicians, scientists, nonprofit organizations, early interest in the environment was a feature of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century. The origins of the movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. The modern conservation movement was first manifested in the forests of India and this was the first case of state management of forests in the world. In 1860, the Department banned the use shifting cultivation, dr. Hugh Cleghorns 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent. Sir Dietrich Brandis joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burmas teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals and he introduced the taungya system, in which Karen villagers provided labour for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. He formulated new forest legislation and helped research and training institutions. The Imperial Forest School at Dehradun was founded by him, the late 19th century saw the formation of the first wildlife conservation societies. The zoologist Alfred Newton published a series of investigations into the Desirability of establishing a Close-time for the preservation of animals between 1872 and 1903. His advocacy for legislation to protect animals from hunting during the season led to the formation of the Plumage League in 1889. The society acted as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins, the Society attracted growing support from the suburban middle-classes, and influenced the passage of the Sea Birds Preservation Act in 1869 as the first nature protection law in the world. For most of the century from 1850 to 1950, however, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs. It was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke, although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke
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Asteroid
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Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
29.
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
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There are great challenges in searching the universe for signs of intelligent life, including their identification and interpretation. As various SETI projects have progressed, their claims have been criticized by researchers as being too euphoric. Scientific investigation of the phenomenon began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s. Focused international efforts to answer a variety of questions have been going on since the 1980s. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a well-funded effort, There have been many earlier searches for extraterrestrial intelligence within the Solar System. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested that a version of his wireless electrical transmission system could be used to contact beings on Mars. On August 21–23,1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a National Radio Silence Day was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle, with William F. Friedman. A1959 paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first pointed out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum, and proposed frequencies and a set of initial targets. In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, named Project Ozma, a 400 kilohertz band around the marker frequency was scanned, using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. The Soviet scientists took a strong interest in SETI during the 1960s, in the March 1955 issue of Scientific American, John D. Kraus described an idea to scan the cosmos for natural radio signals using a flat-plane radio telescope equipped with a parabolic reflector. Within two years, his concept was approved for construction by Ohio State University, with a total of US$71,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, construction began on an 8-hectare plot in Delaware, Ohio. This Ohio State University Radio Observatory telescope was called Big Ear, later, it began the worlds first continuous SETI program, called the Ohio State University SETI program. In 1971, NASA funded a SETI study that involved Drake, Bernard M. Oliver of Hewlett-Packard Corporation, the resulting report proposed the construction of an Earth-based radio telescope array with 1,500 dishes known as Project Cyclops. The price tag for the Cyclops array was US$10 billion, Cyclops was not built, but the report formed the basis of much SETI work that followed. The Ohio State SETI program gained fame on August 15,1977, when Jerry Ehman and he quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the exclamation Wow. in the margin. In 1980, Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman founded the U. S, Planetary Society, partly as a vehicle for SETI studies
30.
Neal Stephenson
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Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer and game designer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk. Stephensons work explores subjects such as mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and he also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury and he is currently Magic Leaps Chief Futurist. His mother worked in a laboratory, and her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephensons family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960 and then in 1966 to Ames and he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson studied at Boston University, first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B. A. in geography, since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Seattle with his family. Stephensons first novel, The Big U, published in 1984, was a take on life at American Megaversity. His next novel, Zodiac, was a following the exploits of a radical environmentalist protagonist in his struggle against corporate polluters. Neither novel attracted critical attention on first publication, but showcased concerns that Stephenson would further develop in his later work. Snow Crash was the first of Stephensons epic science fiction novels, in 1994, Stephenson joined with his uncle, J. Frederick George, to publish a political thriller, Interface, under the pen name Stephen Bury, they followed this in 1996 with The Cobweb. Stephensons next solo novel, published in 1995, was The Diamond Age, or A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer, seen back then as futuristic, Stephensons novel has broad range universal self-learning nanotechnology, dynabooks, extensive modern technologies, robotics, cybernetics and cyber cities. It has subsequently reissued in three separate volumes in some countries, including in French and Spanish translations. In 2013, Cryptonomicon won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, the Baroque Cycle is a series of historical novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is in some respects a prequel to Cryptonomicon. The System of the World won the Prometheus Award in 2005, following this, Stephenson published a novel titled Anathem, a very long and detailed work, perhaps best described as speculative fiction. It is set in an Earthlike world, deals with metaphysics, Stephensons novel REAMDE was released on September 20,2011. The title is a play on the common filename README and this thriller, set in the present, centers around a group of MMORPG developers caught in the middle of Chinese cyber-criminals, Islamic terrorists, and Russian mafia
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Anathem
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Anathem is a speculative fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Major themes include the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism. Anathem is set on and around the fictional planet Arbre, thousands of years before the events in the novel, the planets intellectuals entered concents to protect their activities from the collapse of society. The avout are allowed to communicate with people outside the walls of the concent only once every year, decade, century, or millennium, the narrator and protagonist, Fraa Erasmas, is an avout at the Concent of Saunt Edhar. His primary teacher, Fraa Orolo, discovers that a spacecraft is orbiting Arbre – a fact that the Sæcular Power attempts to cover up. Orolo secretly observes the alien ship with a camera, technology that is prohibited for the avout. Erasmas becomes aware of the content of Orolos research after Orolo is banished from the Mathic World for his possession, but the presence of the alien ship soon becomes an open secret among many of the avout at St. Edhar. Shortly after that, the Sæcular Power evoke many avout from Saunt Edhar, Erasmas and several companions, on Fraa Jads suggestion, decide to seek out Orolo. During the discussions between Orolo and Erasmas, a spacecraft lands in Orithena, on the very site of the ancient Mathic worlds Analemma. A female alien is on board, but dead of a recent gunshot wound and she has brought with her four vials of blood – presumably that of the aliens – and much evidence about their technology. Shortly thereafter, the aliens propel a massive metal rod at a nearby volcano, Orolo sacrifices his life to ensure the safety of the dead aliens remains and her blood samples, an event that leads to his canonization as Saunt Orolo. Erasmas then travels to the concent of Saunt Tredegarh – where he was expected to have gone when evoked – to attend the Convox. This is a joint conference of the avout and the Sæcular Power, dedicated to dealing with the military, political, and technical issues raised by the existence of the alien ship in Arbres orbit. Much research is done on the samples Orolo sacrificed his life to save, the mulitple-worlds interpretation of the cosmos is discussed in great detail by the high-level avout at successive evening meals to which Erasmus performs the duties of a servant. In this section of the novel, it becomes plain that Laterre is our own Earth, which serves as a higher plane of existence for Urnud and Tro. He explains that the aliens are experiencing internal conflict between two factions, the currently ruling faction intends to attack and raid Arbre for its resources in order to repair their spaceship, while the opposing faction favors open negotiation. Jules Durand offers to assist the avout of Arbre in resisting the ruling faction of the aliens, fearing alien attack after Durand has been exposed, the avout evacuate Saunt Tredegarh and all the other concents on Arbre simultaneously. Erasmas and his comrades are taken to a distant sanctuary, where they receive training for a mission to board the alien ship, three people – including Fraa Jad – are issued detonators
32.
Owen Tromans
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Owen Tromans is a musician based in the United Kingdom. He played with the group San Lorenzo and now records under his own name, Tromans has recorded several albums and two EPs since 2001. Tromans plays in the guitar duo Delphic Vapours with author. For Haden EP Golden Margins Tromans contributed to an album of James Joyce poetry set to music entitled Chamber Music which was released on Fire Records in 2008 and he contributed to the 6th issue of Esopus Magazines CD Series. In April 2011 Tromans released a single with Wooden Wand on the English label Critical Heights. Owen Tromans on Twitter Owen Tromans on SoundCloud Owen Tromans discography, forum, and marketplace at Discogs
33.
Chris Anderson (writer)
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Chris Anderson is a British-American author and entrepreneur. He was with The Economist for seven years before joining WIRED magazine in 2001 and he is known for his 2004 article entitled The Long Tail, which he later expanded into the 2006 book, The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. He is the cofounder and current CEO of 3D Robotics, a manufacturing company. His family moved to the United States, when he was five and he enrolled for a degree program in physics from George Washington University and went on to study quantum mechanics and science journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He later did research at Los Alamos National Laboratory and he began his career with a six-year period as editor at the two scientific journals, Nature and Science. He took over as editor of WIRED in 2001 and his 2004 article The Long Tail in WIRED was expanded into a book in 2006, titled, The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. It appeared on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers list, Anderson was accused of plagiarizing content from English Wikipedia for his book. Anderson responded that he had disagreements with the criticism, and reasoned that the mention of citations were avoided due to the nature of content in English Wikipedia. However, the episode led him to integrate footnotes into the text. Free debuted as #12 on the New York Times Best Seller List and it was also available as a free download for a limited time, and an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 digital copies were downloaded in the first two weeks. Andersons third book, Makers, The New Industrial Revolution, was based on his 2010 article, the book describes how entrepreneurs using open source design, and 3D printing as a platform for driving resurgence of American manufacturing. In 2007, Anderson founded GeekDad, a blog that later became part of Wired. com. He was the editor until the role was handed over to Ken Denmead, the same year, Anderson founded Booktour. com, a free online service that connected authors on tour with audiences. In May 2007, Anderson was featured as one of the top 100 thinkers in Time Magazines annual list for 2007, Anderson currently lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and five children. He met his wife while working at the journal, Nature. The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Free, The Future of a Radical Price. Biography, from OReilly Free, The Past and Future of a Radical Price Keynote speech at Nokia World 2007 in Amsterdam on December 5,2007, from Do It Yourself to Do It Together
34.
Esther Dyson
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Esther Dyson is a Swiss-born American journalist, author, businesswoman, investor, commentator and philanthropist. She is an angel investor focused on breakthrough efficacy in healthcare, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology. Dyson is currently focusing her career on health and continues to invest in health and she is the founder of HICCup. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in economics, she joined Forbes as a fact-checker, in 1977, she joined New Court Securities as the research department, following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer Holdings covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen and she sold EDventure Holdings to CNET Networks in 2004, but left CNET in January 2007. Currently, Dyson is a member and active investor in a variety of start-ups, mostly in online services, health care/genetics. Previously, Dyson and her company EDventure specialized in analyzing the effect of emerging technologies and she created the following publications on technology, Release 1.0, her monthly technology-industry newsletter, published by EDventure Holdings. Until 2006, Dyson wrote several issues herself and edited the others, when she left CNET, the newsletter was picked up by OReilly Media, which appointed Jimmy Guterman to edit it and renamed the newsletter Release 2.0. Release 2.0, her 1997 book on how the Internet affects individuals lives and its full title is Release 2.0, A design for living in the digital age. The revision Release 2.1 was published in 1998, and since about 2003, she has maintained an active Flickr account at Dysons Flickr She contributes monthly to www. project-syndicate. org. She sits on the boards of MEDESK, 23andMe, Eventful. com, Luxoft, pressreader. com, PA Consulting, Personal Inc, Voxiva, WPP Group, XCOR Aerospace and Yandex. Dyson is an adviser to the First Monday journal and Visual Ops, a contributor to Arianna Huffingtons online Huffington Post. As of early 2007, Dyson describes herself as spending more and more time on private aviation and commercial space startups and also in health care, from 2005, to 2007 she hosted the Flight School conference in Aspen. She is currently on the board of directors of 23andMe, and is one of the first ten volunteers in the Personal Genome Project, Dyson is an active member of a number of non-profit and advisory organizations. From 1998 to 2000, she was the chairman of ICANN. As of 2004, she sat on its committee, dedicated to defining a role for individuals in ICANNs decision-making. She opposed ICANNs 2012 expansion of generic top-level domains and she has served as a trustee of, and helped fund, emerging organizations such as Glasses for Humanity, Bridges. org, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Eurasia Foundation. She is a member of the Board of Directors of The After-School Corporation and she is also a member of the boards of the Sunlight Foundation, StopBadware, The Long Now Foundation
35.
David Eagleman
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David Eagleman is an American writer and neuroscientist, serving as an adjunct associate professor at Stanford University in the department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. He also independently serves as the director of the Center for Science and he is known for his work on brain plasticity, time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a member in the World Economic Forum. He is the writer and presenter of the international six-hour television series, Eagleman was born in New Mexico to Arthur and Cirel Egelman, a physician and biology teacher, respectively. An early experience of falling from a roof raised his interest in understanding the basis of time perception. He attended the Albuquerque Academy for high school, as an undergraduate at Rice University, he majored in British and American literature. He spent his year abroad at Oxford University and graduated from Rice in 1993. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 1998, Eagleman is currently adjunct associate professor at Stanford University and previously directed a neuroscience research laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine. He sits on boards of arts organizations and is the youngest member of the board of directors of the Long Now Foundation. He was voted one of Houstons Most Stylish men, and Italys Style fashion magazine named Eagleman one of the Brainiest, Brightest Idea Guys and he was awarded the Science Educator Award by the Society for Neuroscience. Stewart Brand wrote that David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist, Eagleman founded Deathswitch, an internet based dead mans switch service, in 2007. In 2015, Eagleman gave a TED talk which unveiled a method for using sound-to-touch sensory substitution to feed data streams into the brain and he spun off a company from his lab, NeoSensory, with offices in Houston and the Bay Area. Eaglemans scientific work combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals. Areas for which he is known include temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, in one experiment, he dropped himself and other volunteers from a 150-foot tower to measure time perception as they fell. He writes that his goal is to understand how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world. Synesthesia is a perceptual condition in which stimulation to one sense triggers an involuntary sensation in other senses. Eagleman is the developer of The Synesthesia Battery, an online test by which people can determine whether they are synesthetic. Neurolaw is a field that determines how modern brain science should affect the way we make laws, punish criminals
36.
Ping Fu
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Ping Fu is a Chinese-American entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of 3D software development company Geomagic, and was its executive officer until February 2013 when the company was acquired by 3D Systems Inc. As of March 2014, she is the Vice President and Chief Entrepreneur Officer at 3D Systems, Fu grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and moved to the United States in 1984. In 2013, she published her memoir, Bend, Not Break, Ping Fu was born in 1958 in Nanjing, China, where her father was a professor at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Fu spent her childhood and early adulthood in China and she grew up during the Cultural Revolution, during which she was separated from both her parents for several years. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, she attended the college later became the Suzhou University studying Chinese literature. Fu said that, after turning in her research, she believes it was passed to an editor who wrote an editorial on the infanticide of female children. Fu has stated that she was briefly imprisoned by government officials and was told to leave the country. After this event, she left school, without graduating, Fu left China and arrived in the United States in January 1984. She initially enrolled at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque but later moved to San Diego to study science as an undergraduate at the University of California. During her time in San Diego, Fu worked part-time at a company called Resource Systems Group as a programmer. Following her graduation from UC San Diego with a degree in computer science, she moved to Illinois. The company offered a Ph. D assistance program, through which Fu enrolled in the computer science Ph. D program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at UIUC she completed a masters degree in computer science. In the early 1990s, Fu began working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, according to her supervisor, Joseph Hardin, Fu was one of the managers involved in the discussions from which the idea for the browser was developed. In 1994 Ping took a position at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She founded Geomagic with her then-husband, Herbert Edelsbrunner, whose research formed the basis for the software to be developed by the company. In 1997, she left the NCSA to begin operations at Geomagic, the company was originally named Raindrop Geomagic and was based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. It was founded with the aim of developing 3D imaging software that could enable customized manufacturing using 3D printers, initially, Fu and Edelsbrunner funded Geomagic themselves, along with investment from Fus sister Hong and her husband, and later from a group of angel investors
37.
Mitch Kapor
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In 1990 with John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and served as its chairman until 1994. Kapor has been an investor in the computing industry, and supporter of social causes, like the Hidden Genius Project, The College Bound Brotherhood. Kapor was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised on Long Island in Freeport, New York and he received a B. A. C. at the time. He began but did not complete a degree at MIT’s Sloan School of Management but later served on the faculty of the MIT Media Lab. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen, Lotus first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp, the distributors of the Visicalc spreadsheet, shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had an agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26,1983, the name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In practice the two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Jerome Want says, Under founder and CEO Mitch Kapor, Lotus was a company with few rules, Kapor decided that he was no longer suited to running a company, and he replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Kapor was extensively involved in initiatives that created the modern Internet and he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 and served as its chairman until 1994. EFF defends civil liberties in the world and works to ensure that rights. Kapor attended the first Wikimania in 2005 and he was also founding Chair of the Commercial Internet Exchange. In 2003, Kapor became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, Kapor serves on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. In May 2009, after founder Susan P. Crawford had joined the Obama administration, in 1996, the Computer History Museum named him a Museum Fellow for his development of Lotus 1-2-3, the first major software application for the IBM PC. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation to support his philanthropic interests in environmental health, as an active angel investor, Kapor participated in the initial rounds of Dropcam, Twilio, Asana, Cleanify, and Uber. In August 2015, Mitch and Freada announced they would invest $40 million over three years to accelerate their work to make the tech ecosystem more inclusive and he is married to Freada Kapor Klein and resides in Oakland and Healdsburg, California. Both served on the Board of Trustees of the Summer Science Program from 2004 to 2006 and he was a student of the program in 1966
38.
Kevin Kelly (editor)
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Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian, Kelly was born in Pennsylvania on August 14,1952, and graduated from Westfield High School, Westfield, New Jersey, in 1970. Through his father, an executive for Time who used systems analysis in his work and he attended the University of Rhode Island for one year, studying geology. Kelly traveled extensively backpacking in Asia, while travelling in the Middle East, he had a conversion experience and became a born-again Christian. Kelly lives in Pacifica, California, a coastal town just south of San Francisco. He is married to the biochemist Gia-Miin Fuh and has three children, Kaileen, Ting, and Tywen and he regrets not having a fourth child. Among Kellys personal involvements is a campaign to make an inventory of all living species on earth. He is also sequencing his genome and co-organizes the Bay Area Quantified Self Meetup Group, Kelly began contributing freelance articles to CoEvolution Quarterly in 1980, while living in Athens, Georgia. Around this time he was editing his own start-up magazine called Walking Journal. He was hired in 1983 by Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand to edit some of the editions of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Whole Earth Review. With Brand, Kelly helped found the WELL, a virtual community. As director of the Point Foundation, he co-sponsored the first Hackers Conference in 1984, in 1992, Kelly was hired by Louis Rossetto to serve as executive editor of Wired. Kelly brought to the magazine the cybernetic social vision of the Whole Earth publications and their style of editorial work. Kelly stepped down as editor in 1999, his current job title at Wired is Senior Maverick. Partially due to his reputation as Wireds editor, he is noted as a participant in and an observer of cyberculture. Kellys writing has appeared in other national and international publications such as The New York Times, The Economist, Time, Harpers Magazine, Science, Veneer Magazine, GQ. His photographs have appeared in Life and other American national magazines, Kellys book-length publication, Out of Control, The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, presents a view on the mechanisms of complex organization. Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organisations, intelligent computers, Kelly was a futurist adviser on the Steven Spielberg directed movie Minority Report
39.
Roger G. Kennedy
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He was especially concerned about expanding the services educational role and moved to enlarge its presence beyond the parks via the Internet. Kennedy graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1952 and he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1952 as a Republican, later he became a Democrat. In 1969 the Ford Foundation brought him on as president for finance. During his tenure the NPS restructured its operations and sharply reduced its central office staffs as part of a government-wide effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy. Kennedy resigned at the end of President Clintons first term in 1997 and he was married to Frances Kennedy. He died from melanoma on September 30,2011, at the age of 85, the Human Element 2001 The George Wright Society. First published in THE GEORGE WRIGHT FORUM, Volume 18, No.2, burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson, A Study in Character 2000 Oxford University Press. National Park Service National Park Service Biography Appearances on C-SPAN Booknotes interview with Kennedy on Orders From France, July 9,1989
