1.
International Standard Serial Number
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An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title, ISSN are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature. The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971, ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC9 is responsible for maintaining the standard. When a serial with the content is published in more than one media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media, the ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN and electronic ISSN, respectively. The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers, as an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows, NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character. The ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, for calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, the modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, at the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept, where ISBNs are assigned to individual books, an ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an identifier associated with a serial title. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change, separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. Also, a CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved, however, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial
2.
Albert Einstein
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Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics, Einsteins work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led him to develop his theory of relativity during his time at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Briefly before, he aquired the Swiss citizenship in 1901, which he kept for his whole life and he continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe. He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and, being Jewish, did not go back to Germany and he settled in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1940. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project, Einstein supported defending the Allied forces, but generally denounced the idea of using the newly discovered nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955. Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, on 5 December 2014, universities and archives announced the release of Einsteins papers, comprising more than 30,000 unique documents. Einsteins intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein synonymous with genius, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, the Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of 5 for three years. At the age of 8, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, the loss forced the sale of the Munich factory. In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan, when the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the schools regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought was lost in strict rote learning, at the end of December 1894, he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctors note. During his time in Italy he wrote an essay with the title On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field
3.
Rufus Porter (inventor)
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For the American football player see Rufus Porter. For the American poet see Rufus L. Porter, Rufus M. Porter was an American painter, inventor, and founder of Scientific American magazine. Rufus Porter descended from an old colonial New England family, the familys first immigrants to the US were Mary and John Porter who emigrated from Dorset, England to Salem, Massachusetts in the early 17th century. When John died in 1676 he was the largest landowner around, owning property that included the cities of Salem, Danvers, Wenham, Beverly, Topsfield and Boxford. Later descendants included Benjamin Porter, who was Rufus great-grandfather, Benjamin moved to West Boxford in 1716 and became the wealthiest man there. His descendants include ministers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, a colonel, a ships captain. He was related by marriage to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Honorable Rufus King, the family farm descended to Abigail and Tyler Porter, parents of Rufus Porter. Porter was born in West Boxford, Massachusetts and he was one of six children. His father was Tyler Porter and his mother was Abigail Johnson, Rufus started school at age 4. The family farm was sold in 1801 and the moved to Maine when Rufus was 9 years old. They lived in Pleasant Mountain Gore, now part of Bridgton, at age 12 Rufus attended the Fryeburg Academy for six months. In 1807 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, by 1816 Porter was living in New Haven, Connecticut, where he had a dancing school and began painting portraits. In 1818-1819 he made a voyage to the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. He traveled by coach and on foot, painting portraits throughout New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. He became a prolific muralist between 1825 and 1845, decorating some 160 houses and inns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, from simple silhouettes to scenes of entire towns or harbors, Porter spread his art throughout New England. His murals were executed in a large scale on dry plaster walls by a combination of freehand painting and stenciling. Some murals were in color, others in monochrome, with the foliage sometimes stamped in with a cork stopper instead of being painted with a brush. Often he would do portraits of the household members where he was doing the murals
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United States Patent and Trademark Office
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The USPTO is unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars. The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington, the head of the USPTO is Michelle K. Lee. She took up her new role on January 13,2014, on March 13, she formally took office as Director after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U. S. Senate. She formerly served as the Director of the USPTOs Silicon Valley satellite office, the USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO mission is to maintain a permanent, interdisciplinary historical record of all U. S. patent applications in order to fulfill objectives outlined in the United States Constitution. The legal basis for the United States patent system is Article 1, Section 8, an additional building in Arlington, Virginia, was opened in 2009. The USPTO was expected by 2014 to open its first ever satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, the first satellite office opened in Detroit on July 13,2012. In 2013, due to the sequestration, the satellite office for Silicon Valley. However, renovation and infrastructure updates continued after the sequestration, and the Silicon Valley location is due to open in San Jose City Hall in mid-2015. As of September 30,2009, the end of the U. S. governments fiscal year, of those,6,242 were patent examiners and 388 were trademark examining attorneys, the rest are support staff. They are generally newly graduated scientists and engineers, recruited from universities around the nation. They hold degrees in scientific disciplines, but who do not necessarily hold law degrees. Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners must be licensed attorneys, all examiners work under a strict, count-based production system. For every application, counts are earned by composing, filing, and mailing a first office action on the merits, the Patent Operations of the office is divided into nine different technology centers that deal with various arts. Prior to 2012, decisions of patent examiners may be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the United States Supreme Court may ultimately decide on a patent case. Similarly, decisions of trademark examiners may be appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with subsequent appeals directed to the Federal Circuit, under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was converted to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or PTAB. In recent years, the USPTO has seen increasing delays between when a patent application is filed and when it issues, to address its workload challenges, the USPTO has undertaken an aggressive program of hiring and recruitment. The USPTO hired 1,193 new patent examiners in Fiscal Year 2006,1,215 new examiners in fiscal 2007, in 2006, USPTO instituted a new training program for patent examiners called the Patent Training Academy
5.
Perpetual motion
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Perpetual motion is motion of bodies that continues indefinitely. A perpetual motion machine is a machine that can do work indefinitely without an energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics and these laws of thermodynamics apply even at very grand scales. Thus, machines that extract energy from finite sources will not operate indefinitely, because they are driven by the energy stored in the source, a common example is devices powered by ocean currents, whose energy is ultimately derived from the Sun, which itself will eventually burn out. Machines powered by more obscure sources have proposed, but are subject to the same inescapable laws. The history of perpetual motion machines dates back to the Middle Ages, for millennia, it was not clear whether perpetual motion devices were possible or not, but the development of modern theories of thermodynamics has shown that they are impossible. Despite this, many attempts have been made to such machines. Modern designers and proponents often use other terms, such as over unity, there is a scientific consensus that perpetual motion in an isolated system violates either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, or both. The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, in other words, In any isolated system, one cannot create new energy The output work power of heat engines is always smaller than the input heating power. The rest of the energy supplied is wasted as heat to the ambient surroundings. The efficiency has a maximum, given by the Carnot efficiency and it is always lower than one. The efficiency of heat engines is even lower than the Carnot efficiency due to irreversibility arising from the speed of processes. Statements 2 and 3 apply to heat engines, other types of engines which convert e. g. mechanical into electromagnetic energy, cannot operate with 100% efficiency, because it impossible to design any system that is free of energy dissipation. By way of example, clocks and other machines, such as Coxs timepiece, have been designed to run on the differences in barometric pressure or temperature between night and day. These machines have a source of energy, albeit one which is not readily apparent so that they seem to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Even machines which extract energy from long-lived sources - such as ocean currents - will run down when their energy sources inevitably do and they are not perpetual motion machines because they are consuming energy from an external source and are not isolated systems. It thus violates the first law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy, a perpetual motion machine of the second kind is a machine which spontaneously converts thermal energy into mechanical work. When the thermal energy is equivalent to the work done, this does not violate the law of conservation of energy, however, it does violate the more subtle second law of thermodynamics
6.
Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father
7.
Universal joint
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A universal joint is a joint or coupling in a rigid rod that allows the rod to bend in any direction, and is commonly used in shafts that transmit rotary motion. It consists of a pair of hinges located close together, oriented at 90° to each other, the universal joint is not a constant-velocity joint. The main concept of the joint is based on the design of gimbals. One anticipation of the joint was its use by the ancient Greeks on ballistae. The mechanism was described in Technica curiosa sive mirabilia artis by Gaspar Schott. The first recorded use of the universal joint for this device was by Hooke in 1676. He published a description in 1678, resulting in the use of the term Hookes joint in the English-speaking world, christopher Polhem of Sweden later re-invented the universal joint, giving rise to the name Polhemsknut in Swedish. In 1841, the English scientist Robert Willis analyzed the motion of the universal joint, by 1845, the French engineer and mathematician Jean-Victor Poncelet had analyzed the movement of the universal joint using spherical trigonometry. The term universal joint was used in the 18th century and was in use in the 19th century. Edmund Morewoods 1844 patent for a metal coating machine called for a joint, by that name. Ephriam Shays locomotive patent of 1881, for example, used double universal joints in the drive shaft. Charles Amidon used a much smaller universal joint in his bit-brace patented 1884, beauchamp Towers spherical, rotary, high speed steam engine used an adaptation of the universal joint circa 1885. The term Cardan joint appears to be a latecomer to the English language, many early uses in the 19th century appear in translations from French or are strongly influenced by French usage. Examples include an 1868 report on the Exposition Universelle of 1867 and these variables are illustrated in the diagram on the right. Also shown are a set of fixed coordinate axes with unit vectors x ^ and y ^ and these planes of rotation are perpendicular to the axes of rotation and do not move as the axles rotate. The two axles are joined by a gimbal which is not shown, however, axle 1 attaches to the gimbal at the red points on the red plane of rotation in the diagram, and axle 2 attaches at the blue points on the blue plane. Coordinate systems fixed with respect to the axles are defined as having their x-axis unit vectors pointing from the origin towards one of the connection points. This configuration uses two U-joints joined by a shaft, with the second U-joint phased in relation to the first U-joint to cancel the changing angular velocity
8.
Car
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A car is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation and a product of the automotive industry. The year 1886 is regarded as the year of the modern car. In that year, German inventor Karl Benz built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, cars did not become widely available until the early 20th century. One of the first cars that was accessible to the masses was the 1908 Model T, an American car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Cars were rapidly adopted in the United States of America, where they replaced animal-drawn carriages and carts, cars are equipped with controls used for driving, parking, passenger comfort and safety, and controlling a variety of lights. Over the decades, additional features and controls have been added to vehicles, examples include rear reversing cameras, air conditioning, navigation systems, and in car entertainment. Most cars in use in the 2010s are propelled by a combustion engine. Both fuels cause air pollution and are blamed for contributing to climate change. Vehicles using alternative fuels such as ethanol flexible-fuel vehicles and natural gas vehicles are also gaining popularity in some countries, electric cars, which were invented early in the history of the car, began to become commercially available in 2008. There are costs and benefits to car use, the costs of car usage include the cost of, acquiring the vehicle, interest payments, repairs and auto maintenance, fuel, depreciation, driving time, parking fees, taxes, and insurance. The costs to society of car use include, maintaining roads, land use, road congestion, air pollution, public health, health care, road traffic accidents are the largest cause of injury-related deaths worldwide. The benefits may include transportation, mobility, independence. The ability for humans to move flexibly from place to place has far-reaching implications for the nature of societies and it was estimated in 2010 that the number of cars had risen to over 1 billion vehicles, up from the 500 million of 1986. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China, India, the word car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum, or the Middle English word carre. In turn, these originated from the Gaulish word karros, the Gaulish language was a branch of the Brythoic language which also used the word Karr, the Brythonig language evolved into Welsh where Car llusg and car rhyfel still survive. It originally referred to any wheeled vehicle, such as a cart, carriage. Motor car is attested from 1895, and is the formal name for cars in British English. Autocar is a variant that is attested from 1895
9.
Alfred Ely Beach
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Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York Citys earliest subway predecessor and he also patented a typewriter for the blind. Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and was the son of a prominent publisher, Alfred Beach worked for his father until he and a friend, Orson Desaix Munn, decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication. They ran Scientific American until their deaths decades later, and it was carried on by their sons and grandsons for decades more, Munn and Beach also established a very successful patent agency. Beach patented some of his own inventions, notably an early typewriter designed for use by the blind, after the Civil War he founded a school for freed slaves in Savannah, the Beach Institute, which is now the home of the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation. Beachs most famous invention was New York Citys first subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit and this came about during the 1860s, when traffic in New York was a nightmare, especially along the central artery, Broadway. Beach was one of a few visionaries who proposed building a railway under Broadway to help relieve the traffic congestion. Beach was also interested in pneumatic tubes for the transport of letters and packages, with a franchise from the state he began construction of a tunnel for small pneumatic tubes in 1869, but diverted it into a demonstration of a passenger railway that opened on February 26,1870. To build a passenger railway he needed a different franchise, something he lobbied for over four sessions,1870 to 1873. In 1870 state senator William M. Tweed introduced a bill for Beachs subway that did not pass. By the end of 1871 Tweeds Tammany Hall political machine was in disgrace and from then on Beach, in an effort to support from reformers. In 1873 Governor John Adams Dix signed a bill into law, but Beach was not able to raise funds to build over the next six months. During this same time, other investors had built a railway in Greenwich St and Ninth Ave. Beach operated his demonstration railway from February 1870 to April 1873, the former Devlins building was destroyed by fire in 1898. In 1912 workers for Degnon Contracting excavated the tunnel proper during the construction of a line running under Broadway. The tunnel was completely within the limits of the present day City Hall station under Broadway, the Beach tunnelling shield was used in the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canadas first St. Clair Tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario. In January 1887 Beach donated land to 7 men who were starting a club in Stratford. The Housatonic boat club is the oldest operating yacht club in CT. Beach died of pneumonia on January 1,1896 in New York City at the age of 69, the history of Beachs project is briefly described, but is ultimately unrelated to the criminals escape plan
10.
Popular Science (magazine)
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Popular Science is an American bi-monthly magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the American Society of Magazine Editors awards for its excellence in both 2003 and 2004. With roots beginning in 1872, PopSci has been translated into over 30 languages and is distributed to at least 45 countries. The Popular Science Monthly, as the publication was called, was founded in May 1872 by Edward L. Youmans to disseminate scientific knowledge to the educated layman. Youmans had previously worked as an editor for the weekly Appletons Journal, early issues were mostly reprints of English periodicals. William Jay Youmans, Edwards brother, helped found Popular Science Monthly in 1872 and was an editor as well and he became editor-in-chief on Edwards death in 1887. The publisher, D. Appleton & Company, was forced for economic reasons to sell the journal in 1900, james McKeen Cattell became the editor in 1900 and the publisher in 1901. Cattell had a background in academics and continued publishing articles for educated readers, by 1915 the readership was declining and publishing a science journal was a financial challenge. The existing journal would continue the tradition as Scientific Monthly. Existing subscribers would remain subscribed under the new name, Scientific Monthly was published until 1958 when it was absorbed into Science. The Modern Publishing Company acquired the Popular Science Monthly name and this company had purchased Electrician and Mechanic magazine in 1914 and over the next two years merged several magazines together into a science magazine for a general audience. The October 1915 issue was titled Popular Science Monthly and Worlds Advance, the volume number was that of Popular Science but the content was that of Worlds Advance. The new editor was Waldemar Kaempffert, an editor of Scientific American. The change in Popular Science Monthly was dramatic, the old version was a scholarly journal that had eight to ten articles in a 100-page issue. There would be ten to twenty photographs or illustrations, the new version had hundreds of short, easy to read articles with hundreds of illustrations. Editor Kaempffert was writing for the craftsman and hobbyist who wanted to know something about the world of science. The circulation doubled in the first year, from the mid-1930s to the 1960s, the magazine featured fictional stories of Gus Wilsons Model Garage, centered on car problems. An annual review of changes to the new model year cars ran in 1940 and 41 and it continued until the mid-1970s when the magazine reverted to publishing the new models over multiple issues as information became available
11.
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
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Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a privately-held Stuttgart-based company which owns publishing companies worldwide. The company has published a variety of books, from The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway. Other well-known publications of the include the scientific journal Nature. It is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, in 2015, it merged most of its Macmillan Science and Education unit with Springer Science+Business Media, creating the company Springer Nature. Holtzbrinck now owns 53% of the combined company, established by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948, the group first began as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag, in 1985, it acquired the retail book division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company. One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million, in 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr. A year later, it purchased a 70% majority interest in The Macmillan Group, the policy was later changed and Tor titles became available as DRM-free e-books in 2012. The Tor UK label in Britain does the same, the company also received a good deal of attention when it bought the then leading German social networking platform StudiVZ in January 2007. Holtzbrinck has total sales of 2.1 billion euros, 49% of sales are in Germany. It had 2005 earnings before taxes of 142 million euros, chairman of the group is Stefan von Holtzbrinck. John Sargent is CEO of Macmillan, the company that unites the US-based businesses of the group, in Germany, S. Fischer Verlag O. W. Barth Wolfgang Krüger Argon Verlag Scherz Verlag Fretz & Wasmuth Rowohlt Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur Verlag J. B, martins Press Tom Doherty Associates Tor Books Forge Books Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group W. H. Freeman Bedford-St. The Academic Publishing Industry, A Story of Merger and Acquisition – via Northern Illinois University
12.
John Rennie (editor)
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John Rennie was the seventh editor in chief of Scientific American magazine. John Rennie was born in 1959 and he received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Yale University in 1981, after which he worked as a science writer and researcher at Harvard Medical School. He currently teaches science writing as professor at New York Universitys Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He joined the Board of Editors at Scientific American in 1989, Rennie has written and edited articles on biology, technology and medicine and helped Scientific American produce award-winning single-topic issues for a variety of publications. He was editor of the magazine for almost fifteen years, from late 1994 to June 2009 and he appeared as a commentator in the History Channel programs Clash of the Cavemen, and Thats Impossible. He was also the host of the Weather Channel series Hacking the Planet, Rennie has performed improv in New York City and his home town of Boston, and also holds a black-belt in karate. Incomplete - to be updated Rennie, John, seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense. Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesnt Want You to Know, faculty profile, NYU JohnRennie. net, Official website The Gleaming Retort, Official Blog on PLoS
13.
Federation
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A federation is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions under a central government. The governmental or constitutional structure found in a federation is known as federalism and it can be considered the opposite of another system, the unitary state. Federations are often multiethnic and cover an area of territory. The initial agreements create a stability that encourages other common interests, at some time, that is recognized and a movement is organized to merge more closely. At other times, especially when common cultural factors are at such as ethnicity and language. The Old Swiss Confederacy was an example of formal non-unitary statehood. Several colonies and dominions in the New World consisted of autonomous provinces, the oldest continuous federation, and a role model for many subsequent federations, is the United States. Some of the New World federations failed, the Federal Republic of Central America broke up into independent states ten years after its founding, others, such as Argentina and Mexico, have shifted between federal, confederal, and unitary systems, before settling into federalism. Brazil became a federation only after the fall of the monarchy, australia and Canada are also federations. Germany is another nation-state that has switched between confederal, federal and unitary rules, since the German Confederation was founded in 1815, the North German Confederation, the succeeding German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federations. The Russian Federation has inherited a similar system, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and Malaysia became federations on or shortly before becoming independent from the British Empire. In some recent cases, federations have been instituted as a measure to handle ethnic conflict within a state, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq since 2005. The component states are in some sense sovereign, insofar as certain powers are reserved to them that may not be exercised by the central government, however, a federation is more than a mere loose alliance of independent states. The component states of a federation usually possess no powers in relation to foreign policy, however, German Länder have that power, which is beginning to be exercised on a European level. Some federations are called asymmetric because some states have more autonomy than others, an example of such a federation is Malaysia, in which Sarawak and Sabah agreed to form the federation on different terms and conditions from the states of Peninsular Malaysia. A federation often emerges from an agreement between a number of separate states. The purpose can be the will to solve problems and to provide for mutual defense or to create a nation state for an ethnicity spread over several states. The former was the case with the United States and Switzerland, however, as the histories of countries and nations vary, the federalist system of a state can be quite different from these models
14.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
15.
Chongqing
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Chongqing, formerly transliterated as Chungking, is a major city in Southwest China and one of the Five national central cities in China. Administratively, it is one of Chinas four direct-controlled municipalities, the municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the sub-provincial city administration that was part of Sichuan Province. Chongqings population as of 2015 is just over 30 million with a population of 18.38 million. The official abbreviation of the city, Yu, was approved by the State Council on 18 April 1997 and this abbreviation is derived from the old name of a part of the Jialing River that runs through Chongqing and feeds into the Yangtze River. Chongqing was also a Sichuan province municipality during the Republic of China administration, Chongqing has a significant history and culture and serves as the economic centre of the upstream Yangtze basin. It is a manufacturing centre and transportation hub, a July 2012 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit described it as one of Chinas 13 emerging megacities. Tradition associates Chongqing with the State of Ba, the Ba people supposedly established Chongqing during the Spring and Autumn period after moving from their first capital Yicheng in Hubei under pressure from Chu. This new capital was first named Jiangzhou, in 316 BC, however, the state of Ba was conquered by the State of Qin. Jiangzhou subsequently remained under Qin Shi Huangs rule during the Qin Dynasty, the successor of the Qin State, and under the control of Han Dynasty emperors. Jiangzhou was subsequently renamed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties to Chu Prefecture, then in 581 AD to Yu Prefecture, the name Yu however survives to this day as an abbreviation for Chongqing, and the city centre where the old town stood is also called Yuzhong. It received its current name in 1189, after Prince Zhao Dun of the Southern Song Dynasty described his crowning as king, in his honour, Yu Prefecture was therefore renamed Chongqing subprefecture marking the occasion of his enthronement. In 1362, Ming Yuzhen, a peasant rebelling leader, established the Daxia Kingdom at Chongqing for a short time, in 1621, another short-lived kingdom of Daliang was established by She Chongming with Chongqing as its capital. The Manchus later conquered the province, and during the Qing Dynasty, immigration to Chongqing, in 1890, the British Consulate General was opened in Chongqing. The following year, the city became the first inland commerce port open to foreigners, the French, German, US and Japanese consulates were opened in Chongqing in 1896–1904. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, it was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-sheks provisional capital, the city was also visited by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of SEAC which was itself headquartered in Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka. Chiang Kai Shek as Supreme Commander in China worked closely with Stilwell, the Japanese Air Force heavily bombed it. Due to its mountainous environment, many people were saved from the bombing, due to the bravery, contributions and sacrifices made by the local people during World War II, Chongqing became known as the City of Heroes. Many factories and universities were relocated from eastern China to Chongqing during the war, in late November 1949 the Nationalist KMT government fled the city
16.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC
17.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government
18.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
19.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
20.
Encyclopedia Americana
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Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic, the encyclopedia has more than 45,000 articles, most of them more than 500 words and many running to considerable length. The works coverage of American and Canadian geography and history has been a traditional strength, most articles are signed by their contributors. Long available as a 30-volume print set, the Encyclopedia Americana is now marketed as an online encyclopedia requiring a subscription, in March 2008, Scholastic said that print sales remained good but that the company was still deciding on the future of the print edition. The company did not produce an edition in 2007, a change from its previous approach of releasing a revised print edition each year, the most recent print edition of the Encyclopedia Americana was published in 2006. The online version of the Encyclopedia Americana, first introduced in 1997, continues to be updated and this work, like the print set from which it is derived, is designed for high school and first-year college students along with public library users. Grolier Online is not available to individual subscribers, francis Lieber, a German political exile, who came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1827, began publication of Encyclopedia Americana in 1829. The 13 volumes of the first edition were completed in 1833, just before the beginning of the 20th century Richard S. Some of the old material was carried over into the new encyclopedia, the short article method of Brockhaus was continued. Thus in 1902 a new version in 16 volumes that carried some of the old material was published. The magazines editor, Frederick Converse Beach, was editor-in-chief, and was said to be assisted by hundreds of eminent scholars, the relationship with Scientific American was terminated in 1911. From 1907 to 1912, the work was published as The Americana, a major new edition appeared in 1918–20 in 30 volumes, with George Edwin Rines as editor-in-chief. An Annual or Yearbook was also published each year beginning in 1923, the encyclopedia was purchased by Grolier in 1945. Sales during this period were accomplished primarily through mail-order and door-to-door operations, telemarketing and third-party distribution through their Lexicon division added to sales volumes in the 1970s. By the late 1970s, Grolier had moved its operations to Danbury, in 1988 Grolier was purchased by the French media company Hachette, which owned a well-known French-language encyclopedia, the Hachette Encyclopedia. Hachette was later absorbed by the French conglomerate the Lagardère Group, a CD-ROM version of the encyclopedia was published in 1995. Although the text and images were stored on separate disks, it was in keeping with current at the time. More importantly, the work had been digitized, allowing for release of a version in 1997
21.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
22.
Martin Gardner
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He was considered a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carrolls two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies and he had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and was regarded as one of the most important magicians of the twentieth century. He was considered the dean of American puzzlers and he was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books. Gardner was one of the foremost anti-pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century and his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, published in 1957, became a classic and seminal work of the skeptical movement. In 1976 he joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP, an organization promoting scientific inquiry, Gardner, son of a petroleum geologist, grew up in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. His lifelong interest in puzzles started in his boyhood when his father gave him a copy of Sam Loyds Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and he attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelors degree in philosophy in 1936. Early jobs included reporter on the Tulsa Tribune, writer at the University of Chicago Office of Press Relations, during World War II, he served for four years in the U. S. Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort USS Pope in the Atlantic. His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945, after the war, Gardner returned to the University of Chicago. He attended graduate school for a year there, but he did not earn an advanced degree, in 1950 he wrote an article in the Antioch Review entitled The Hermit Scientist. His paper-folding puzzles at that magazine led to his first work at Scientific American, appropriately enough—given his interest in logic and mathematics—they lived on Euclid Avenue. The year 1960 saw the edition of his best-selling book ever. In 1979, Gardner retired from Scientific American and he and his wife Charlotte moved to Hendersonville and he also revised some of his older books such as Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube. Charlotte died in 2000 and two years later Gardner returned to Norman, Oklahoma, where his son, James Gardner, was a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma and he died there on May 22,2010. An autobiography — Undiluted Hocus-Pocus, The Autobiography of Martin Gardner — was published posthumously, the main-belt asteroid 2587 Gardner discovered by Edward L. G. Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station in 1980 is named after Martin Gardner. Martin Gardner had a impact on mathematics in the second half of the 20th century. His column was called Mathematical Games but it was more than that. His writing introduced many readers to real mathematics for the first time in their lives, the column lasted for 25 years and was read avidly by the generation of mathematicians and physicists who grew up in the years 1956 to 1981. It was the inspiration for many of them to become mathematicians or scientists themselves
23.
Douglas Hofstadter
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Hofstadters book Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid, first published in 1979, won both the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and a National Book Award for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science, Hofstadter was born in New York City, the son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor and he was initially appointed to the Indiana Universitys Computer Science Department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes. In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 1988 he returned to Bloomington as College of Arts and Sciences Professor in both cognitive science and computer science. In 1988 Hofstadter received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquirys highest honor, in April 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Hofstadters many interests include music, visual art, the mind, creativity, consciousness, self-reference, translation and mathematics. Hofstadters doctoral student James Marshall subsequently extended the Copycat project under the name Metacat, the Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model the act of artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform gridfonts. The pursuit of beauty has driven Hofstadter both inside and outside his professional work and he seeks beautiful mathematical patterns, beautiful explanations, beautiful typefaces, beautiful sonic patterns in poetry, etc. Hofstadter has said of himself, Im someone who has one foot in the world of humanities and arts, and he has had several exhibitions of his artworks in various university art galleries. These shows have featured large collections of his gridfonts, his ambigrams, the computational architectures that share these precepts are called active symbols architectures. In GEB he draws an analogy between the organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent colony of neurons. The prototypical example of this notion is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödels incompleteness theorems. Both in his writing and in his teaching, Hofstadter stresses the concrete, constantly using examples and analogies, typical of the courses he teaches is his seminar Group Theory and Galois Theory Visualized, in which abstract mathematical ideas are rendered as concretely as possible. He puts great effort into making ideas clear and visual, and asserts that when he teaches, if his students do not understand something, it is never their fault, in addition to English, his mother tongue, he speaks French and Italian fluently. At various times in his life, he has studied German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Mandarin, Dutch, Polish and his love of sounds pushes him to strive to minimize, and ideally get rid of, any foreign accent. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as pilingual, as well as an oligoglot, in 1999, the bicentennial year of Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkins classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. Hofstadters Law states that It always takes longer than you expect, the Law is outlined in his work Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid. Hofstadters former Ph. D. students include, Don Byrd—Music Notation by Computer David Chalmers—Toward a Theory of Consciousness Gray A
24.
Metamagical Themas
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Metamagical Themas is an eclectic collection of articles that Douglas Hofstadter wrote for the popular science magazine Scientific American during the early 1980s. The anthology was published in 1985 by Basic Books, the volume is substantial in size and contains extensive notes concerning responses to the articles and other information relevant to their content. Another notable feature is the inclusion of two dialogues in the style of those appearing in Gödel, Escher, Bach, there are three articles centered on the Lisp programming language, where Hofstadter first details the language itself, and then shows how it relates to Gödels incompleteness theorem. Two articles are devoted to Rubiks Cube and other such puzzles, many other topics are also mentioned, all in Hofstadters usual easy, approachable style. Many chapters open with an illustration of an extremely abstract alphabet, yet one which is recognizable as such. The game of Nomic was first introduced to the public in this column, in June 1982, the index of the book mentions Hofstadters recurring alter ego, Egbert B. Beginning in January 1981 Hofstadter began sharing the games column in Scientific American magazine with Martin Gardner, the subject matter of the articles is loosely woven about themes in philosophy, creativity, artificial intelligence, typography and fonts, and important social issues. He called his column Metamagical Themas, an anagram of Gardners title Mathematical Games, during 1981 they alternated writing the columns. Then Hofstadter took over in January 1982 and continued writing the feature until he retired his column in July 1983 for a total of 25 columns and these columns are listed in chronological order below. Metamagical Themas was also published in French, under the title Ma Thémagie, the translators being Jean-Baptiste Berthelin, Jean-Luc Bonnetain, the wordplay was lost in the French title, and replaced with another one. Metamagical Themas at Google Books A Person Paper on Purity in Language, one of the included essays, first published in September 1983
25.
Michael Shermer
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The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism, Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2001, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column and he is also a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health. Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian, but ceased to believe in the existence of God during his graduate studies and he accepts the labels agnostic, nontheist, atheist and others. He has expressed reservations about such labels for his lack of belief in a God, however, as he sees them being used in the service of pigeonholing and he also describes himself as an advocate for humanist philosophy as well as the science of morality. Michael Brant Shermer was born on September 8,1954 and he was born an only child, and raised in Southern California, specifically the La Cañada area in the foothills surrounding Los Angeles. His father died of an attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000. Shermer began his year of high school in 1971, when the evangelical movement in the United States was beginning to gain popularity. One night at the behest of his best friend George, whose parents were Christian, for the next seven years he evangelized door-to-door as part of his profoundly held beliefs. Shermer enjoyed the social aspects of religion, and particularly relished its theological debates and his stepfather was a hunter who took Shermer and their hunting dogs with him on hunting excursions half a dozen times a year, shooting game such as doves, ducks, and quail with shotguns. They ate everything they killed, for which Shermers stepfather also displayed culinary skills, growing up, Shermer owned a BB gun, then a pellet gun, then a 20-gauge shotgun, and then a 12-gauge shotgun. Shermer graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972, desiring serious theological training, he enrolled at Pepperdine University with the intent of becoming a theologian. He initially majored in Christian theology, in addition to taking courses on the Bible, Shermer studied the writings of C. S. Lewis, and he attended chapel twice a week, which was required for all students. He completed his B. A. in psychology at Pepperdine in 1976 and these discussions, along with his studies in cultural anthropology, led him to question his religious beliefs. From this, Shermer came to conclude it obvious that God was made in our likeness, by midway through his graduate training, he removed the Christian silver ichthys medallion that he had been wearing around his neck for years. He completed his M. A. degree from the California State University in psychology in 1978, the final step in Shermers abandoning religion came when his college sweetheart, Maureen, was in an automobile accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed from the waist down. Shermer relates, When I saw her at the Long Beach Medical Center ER, there, in the ER, day after dreary day, night after sleepless night, I took a knee and bowed my head and asked God to heal Maureens broken back. I cried out to God to overlook my doubts in the name of Maureen, at that time and in that place, I was once again a believer
26.
Public Broadcasting Service
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The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcaster and television program distributor headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is funded by member dues, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, government agencies, corporations, foundations. All proposed funding is subjected to a set of standards to ensure the program is free of influence from the funding source, since the mid 2000s, Roper polls commissioned by PBS have consistently placed the service as the most-trusted national institution in the United States. This arbitrary distinction is a frequent source of viewer confusion and it also operates National Datacast, a subsidiary which offers datacasting services via member stations, and provides additional revenue for PBS and its member stations. Founded by Hartford N. Gunn Jr, in 1973, it merged with Educational Television Stations. Each station is charged with the responsibility of programming content for their individual market or state that supplements content provided by PBS. By contrast, PBS member stations pay fees for the acquired and distributed by the national organization. Under this relationship, PBS member stations have greater latitude in local scheduling than their commercial broadcasting counterparts, scheduling of PBS-distributed series may vary greatly depending on the market. This can be a source of tension as stations seek to preserve their localism, however, PBS has a policy of common carriage, which requires most stations to clear the national prime time programs on a common programming schedule to market them nationally more effectively. Management at former Los Angeles member KCET cited unresolvable financial and programming disputes among its reasons for leaving PBS after over 40 years in January 2011. Most PBS stations timeshift some distributed programs, once PBS accepts a program offered for distribution, PBS, rather than the originating member station, retains exclusive rebroadcasting rights during an agreed period. Suppliers retain the right to sell the program in non-broadcast media such as DVDs, books, in 1991, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting resumed production for most PBS shows that debuted prior to 1977, with the exceptions of Washington Week in Review and Wall Street Week. In 1994, The Chronicle of Philanthropy released the results of the largest study on the popularity and credibility of charitable, the strategy began that fall, with the intent to expand the in-program breaks to the remainder of the schedule if successful. In 2011, PBS released apps for iOS and Android to allow viewing of videos on mobile devices. An update in 2015 added Chromecast support, PBS initially struggled to compete with online media such as YouTube for market share. In a 2012 speech to 850 top executives from PBS stations, in the speech, later described as a “seminal moment” for public television, he laid out his vision for a new style of PBS digital video production. Station leadership rallied around his vision and Seiken formed PBS Digital Studios, which began producing educational but edgy videos, something Seiken called “PBS-quality with a YouTube sensibility. ”The studio’s first hit, in 2012, PBS began organizing much of its prime time programming around a genre-based schedule. PBS broadcasts childrens programming as part of the morning and afternoon schedule
27.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. FSG is known for publishing books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards. The publisher is currently a division of MacMillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Farrar, Straus and Giroux was founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. The first years of existence were rough until they published the book, Look Younger. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for awhile, in the early years, Straus and his wife Dorthea, went prospecting for books in Italy. It was there that they found the memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi and other rising Italian authors Alberto Moravia, Giovanni Guareschi, Robert Giroux joined the company in 1955 and after he later became a partner, the name was changed to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Giroux had been working for Harcourt and had been angered when Harcourt refused to him to publish Salingers Catcher in the Rye. Giroux brought many literary authors with him including Thomas Merton, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Flannery OConnor, Jack Kerouac, Peter Taylor, Randall Jarrell, T. S. Eliot, and Bernard Malamud. In 1964, Straus named Giroux chairman of the board and officially added Girouxs name to the publishing company, Straus offered FSG to the Holtzbrinck family because of their reputation for publishing serious works of literature. Jonathan Galassi is president and publisher, andrew Mandel joined in 2004 as deputy publisher. In 2008, Mitzi Angel came from Fourth Estate in the UK to be publisher of the Faber and Faber Inc. imprint, other notable editors include Sean McDonald, Ileene Smith, Alex Star, Amanda Moon, and Sarah Crichton. In February 2015 FSG and Faber and Faber announced the end of their partnership, all books scheduled for release and previously released under the imprint will be moved to the FSG colophon by August 2016. S. Its authors include David Auburn, Margaret Edson, Doug Wright, Richard Greenberg, Tom Stoppard, David Hare, Neil LaBute, Peter Conrad, Martin Eisenstadt, hill and Wang publishes books of academic interest and specializes in history. Its authors include Roland Barthes, William Cronon, Langston Hughes, Sarah Crichton Books publishes books with a slightly commercial bent. The imprint launched with Cathleen Falsanis The God Factor in 2006, ishmael Beahs A Long Way Gone was a bestseller and a Starbucks featured book in 2007. North Point Press published literary nonfiction with an emphasis on history, travel, ecology, music, food. Its authors include Peter Matthiessen, Beryl Markham, Guy Davenport, A. J. Liebling, Margaret Visser, Wendell Berry, scientific American / FSG, led by Amanda Moon, publishes non-fiction popular science books for the general reader. Its authors include Jesse Bering, Daniel Chamovitz, Kevin Dutton, FSG Books for Young Readers publishes National Book Award winners Madeleine LEngle, William Steig, Louis Sachar, and Polly Horvath
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Seth Shostak
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Seth Shostak is an American astronomer, currently Senior Astronomer for the SETI Institute and former Director of Center for SETI Research when it was a separate department. Shostak grew up in Arlington County, Virginia, and earned his B. S. in physics from Princeton University, Shostak is an active participant in the Institute’s observation programs and has been hosting SETIs weekly radio show Big Picture Science since 2002. Each week, Shostak interviews guests about the latest scientific research on a variety of topics, cosmology, physics, genetics, paleontology, evolutionary biology and astrobiology. Big Picture Science is distributed on the Public Radio Satellite System, Shostak also hosts the monthly Skeptic Check show focused on debunking pseudoscience, UFOs and practices such as astrology and dowsing. In 2010, he was elected as a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and he was the Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Committee from 2003-2012. He has published four books, nearly 300 popular articles on astronomy, technology, film and television, before his involvement with SETI research, he used radio telescopes in the USA and the Netherlands, searching for clues to the ultimate fate of the universe by analyzing galaxy motion. In 1999, he produced twelve 30-minute lectures on audio-tape and video titled The Search for Intelligent Life in Space for The Teaching Company, in January 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has been an observer for Project Phoenix as well as a participant in various international forums for SETI research. He served as Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Study Group from 2002 to 2012, shostak’s hobbies include film making, railroading, and computer animation. While working at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands he founded DIGIMA and he is a brother of Robert Shostak, developer of Paradox. In the spring of 1988 Seth left Groningen to help his brother, Shostak has a considerable body of creative writing, mostly for corporate clients. Life in the Universe, Jeffrey O. Bennett, Bruce Jakosky and Seth Shostak,1980, sharing the Universe, Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life, Seth Shostak, foreword by Frank Drake 1998, ISBN 0-9653774-3-1. Cosmic Company, The Search for Life in the Universe, Seth Shostak, Alex Barnett,2003, confessions of an Alien Hunter, A Scientists Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Seth Shostak, foreword by Frank Drake 2009, ISBN 1-4262-0392-6. Seth Shostak at the Internet Movie Database, Seth Shostak biography at the SETI Institute. Boldly Going Nowhere by Seth Shostak, The New York Times, Shostak interview - RadioLIVE New Zealand. Shostak lecture, The Search for Intelligent Life Among the Stars, Shostak testimony - U. S. Congress, Using Radio in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Could This Be Humanitys Last Century
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Paul Offit
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Paul A. Offit is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds to thousands of lives every day. He has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Offit is a Board Member of Every Child By Two and a Founding Board Member of the Autism Science Foundation. He is one of the most public faces of the consensus that vaccines have no association with autism. As a result, he has attracted controversy, and both a substantial volume of mail and occasional death threats, as well as support for his position. Offit grew up in Baltimore, the son of a shirtmaker and he went to his fathers sales meetings and reacted negatively to the tall tales told by salespeople, preferring instead what he saw as the clean and straightforward life of science. Offit decided to become a doctor, the first in his family, Offit earned his bachelors degree from Tufts University and his M. D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. One of his mentors at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia was Maurice Hilleman, by 2008 Offit had become a leading advocate of childhood immunizations. He was opposed by critics, many of whom believe vaccines cause autism. He received a threat and received protection by an armed guard during meetings at the CDC. His 2008 book Autisms False Prophets catalyzed a backlash against the movement in the U. S. He donated the royalties from the book to the Center for Autism Research at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Offit serves on the board of the American Council on Science and Health. In 2015, Dr. Offit appeared in a vaccine awareness video created by Robert Till and his interest in the disease stemmed from the death of a 9-month-old infant from rotavirus-caused dehydration while under his care as a pediatric resident in 1979. Along with his colleagues Fred Clark and Stanley Plotkin, Offit invented RotaTeq, RotaTeq is one of two vaccines currently used against rotavirus. In February 2006, RotaTeq was approved for inclusion in the recommended U. S. vaccination schedule, following its approval by the Food, premarketing studies found that RotaTeq was effective and safe, with an incidence of adverse events comparable to placebo. RotaTeq has been credited with saving hundreds of lives a day, Offit received an unspecified sum of money for his interest in RotaTeq. Offit was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, in 2002, during a period of fears about bioterrorism, Offit was the only member of the CDCs advisory panel to vote against a program to give smallpox vaccine to tens of thousands of Americans. He later argued on 60 Minutes II and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that the risk of harm for people getting the vaccine outweighed the risk of getting smallpox in the U. S. at the time
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Richard Dawkins
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Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is a fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxfords Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, in 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Dawkins is an atheist, and is known for his criticism of creationism. In The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker in that reproduction, mutation, and selection are unguided by any designer. In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and he opposes the teaching of creationism in schools. Dawkins was born in Nairobi, then in British Kenya, on 26 March 1941 and he is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan and Clinton John Dawkins, who was an agricultural civil servant in the British Colonial Service in Nyasaland. His father was called up into the Kings African Rifles during World War II and returned to England in 1949 and his father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park in Oxfordshire, which he farmed commercially. Dawkins considers himself English and lives in Oxford, England, both his parents were interested in natural sciences, and they answered Dawkinss questions in scientific terms. Dawkins describes his childhood as a normal Anglican upbringing, and that left me with nothing. From 1954 to 1959 Dawkins attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire, an English public school with a distinct Church of England flavour, while at Oundle Dawkins read Bertrand Russells Why I Am Not a Christian for the first time. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1962, while there and he continued as a research student under Tinbergens supervision, receiving his MA and DPhil degrees by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year. Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning and choice. From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, during this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer, in 1990, he became a reader in zoology. He held that professorship from 1995 until 2008, since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford and he is now an emeritus fellow. In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on Growing Up in the Universe and he has also edited several journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. He is listed as an editor and a columnist of the Council for Secular Humanisms Free Inquiry magazine
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