1.
Beaumont, Texas
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Beaumont is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas in the United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Beaumont was founded as a town in 1835 by Northerners, the early European-American settlement had an economy based on the development of lumber, farming, and port industries. Rice became an important commodity crop in Texas, and is now cultivated in 23 counties, a big change occurred in 1901 with the Spindletop gusher, which demonstrated the potential of the huge oil field. With Spindletop, several companies developed in Beaumont, and some continue. The area rapidly developed as one of the major petro-chemical refining areas in the country, along with Port Arthur and Orange, Beaumont forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the Texas Gulf Coast. Beaumont is home of Lamar University, a national Carnegie Doctoral Research university with 14,966 students, including undergraduates and post graduates. Over the years, several corporations have been based in this city, gSUs Edison Plaza headquarters is still the tallest building in Beaumont. In 1824 Noah and Nancy Tevis settled on the west bank of the Neches River, soon after that, a small community grew up around the farm, which was named Tevis Bluff or Neches River Settlement. They began planning a town to be out on this land. Their partnership, J. P. Pulsifer and Company, controlled the first 50 acres upon which the town was founded and this town was named Beaumont, after Jefferson Beaumont, the brother-in-law of Henry Millard. They added more property for a total of 200 acres, Beaumont became a town on 16 December 1838. Beaumonts first mayor was Alexander Calder, from the towns founding in 1835, business activities included real estate, transportation, and retail sales. Later, other businesses were formed, especially in construction and operation, new building construction, lumber sales. The Port of Beaumont became a regional shipping center. Beaumont was a center for cattle raisers and farmers in its early years. With an active riverport by the 1880s, it became an important lumber and it exported rice as a commodity crop. The Beaumont Rice Mill, founded in 1892 by Joseph Eloi Broussard, was the first commercially successful rice mill in Texas, in addition, Broussard founded a company to operate an irrigation system to support rice culture. This helped stimulate the expansion of cultivation from 1500 acres in 1892 to 400,000 acres in 23 counties by his death in 1956
2.
Barcode reader
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A barcode reader is an electronic device that can read and output printed barcodes to a computer. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a source, a lens. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the image data provided by the sensor. Barcode readers can be differentiated by technologies as follows, Pen-type readers consist of a light source, to read a bar code, the person holding the pen must move the tip of it across the bars at a relatively uniform speed. The photodiode measures the intensity of the light reflected back from the source as the tip crosses each bar. The photodiode generates a waveform that is used to measure the widths of the bars, dark bars in the bar code absorb light and white spaces reflect light so that the voltage waveform generated by the photodiode is a representation of the bar and space pattern in the bar code. This waveform is decoded by the scanner in a similar to the way Morse code dots. As with the pen type reader, a photo-diode is used to measure the intensity of the light reflected back from the bar code, CCD readers use an array of hundreds of tiny light sensors lined up in a row in the head of the reader. Each sensor measures the intensity of the light immediately in front of it, two-dimensional imaging scanners are a newer type of bar code reader. They use a camera and image processing techniques to decode the bar code, large field-of-view readers use high resolution industrial cameras to capture multiple bar codes simultaneously. Unlike the simpler single-line laser scanners, they produce a pattern of beams in varying orientations allowing them to read barcodes presented to it at different angles, most of them use a single rotating polygonal mirror and an arrangement of several fixed mirrors to generate their complex scan patterns. Omnidirectional scanners are most familiar through the scanners in supermarkets. Omnidirectional scanners are also better at reading poorly printed, wrinkled, cell phone cameras open up a number of applications for consumers, Movies, DVD/VHS movie catalogs. Music, CD catalogs – play MP3 when scanned, groceries, nutrition information, making shopping lists when the last of an item is used, etc. Personal Property inventory ode scanned into personal finance software when entering, later, scanned receipt images can then be automatically associated with the appropriate entries. Later, the bar codes can be used to weed out paper copies not required to be retained for tax or asset inventory purposes. Receipts scanned on a scanner could be identified and associated with the appropriate entries in finance. Consumer tracking from the retailer perspective, a number of enterprise applications using cell phones are appearing, Access control, inventory reporting, asset tracking
3.
Hurricane Gustav
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Hurricane Gustav /ˈɡʊstɑːv/ was the second most destructive hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm was the tropical cyclone, third hurricane. Gustav caused serious damage and casualties in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Gustav caused at least $6.6 billion in damages. It formed on the morning of August 25,2008, about 260 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, later that day it made landfall near the Haitian town of Jacmel. It inundated Jamaica and ravaged Western Cuba and then moved across the Gulf of Mexico. Once into the Gulf, Gustav gradually weakened because of increased wind shear and it weakened to a Category 2 hurricane late on August 31, and remained at that intensity until landfall on the morning of September 1 near Cocodrie, Louisiana. Weakening continued, and Gustav weakened to a storm that evening. The weak system became extratropical on September 4 and was absorbed by another low on September 5, in total, an estimated 153 deaths had been attributed to Gustav in the U. S. and Caribbean. Damage in the U. S. totaled to $4.3 billion with additional damage of $2.1 billion in Cuba, Gustav formed out of a tropical wave that had previously produced t-rain and squalls in the Lesser Antilles. It developed well-defined curved bands and briefly exhibited an eye feature. The NHC designated it Tropical Depression Seven and dispatched a hurricane hunter aircraft to investigate the system, a brief period of disorganization proved to be temporary as a well-defined eye wall formed that same night. Before reaching Haiti, its satellite presentation continued to intensify, a central dense overcast became more prominent, Hurricane Gustav regained a pronounced eye as it made landfall on Haiti, with 75 mph winds, near the town of Jacmel. As the hurricane moved over Haitis mountainous terrain its circulation was disrupted, although downgraded to a tropical storm, it still had a pronounced eye in its mid- and upper-level structures. Its outflow improved throughout the night of August 26, and the system was not very disrupted when it moved back over water into the Gulf of Gonâve, the storm began a west-southwesterly movement that brought it closer to Jamaica. On the morning of August 28 it was found that, overnight, the storm was also found to have restrengthened nearly to hurricane status. It then was upgraded to a hurricane again during the afternoon of August 29. At 11,00 a. m EDT on August 30, as Gustav neared the west end of Cuba, it was upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, with sustained winds near 125 mph. Gustav continued its rapid deepening trend, and three hours later, it had already reached Category 4 strength, Gustavs maximum sustained winds had reached 155 mph with a minimum pressure of 941 millibars
4.
Forklift
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A forklift is a powered industrial truck used to lift and move materials short distances. The forklift was developed in the early 20th century by various companies including the manufacturing company Clark. Following World War II the use and development of the truck has greatly expanded worldwide. Forklifts have become a piece of equipment in manufacturing and warehousing operations. In 2013 alone the top 20 manufacturers worldwide posted sales of $30.4 billion with 944,405 machines sold, the middle nineteenth century through the early 20th century saw the developments that led to todays modern forklifts. The forerunners of the modern forklift were manually powered hoists that were used to lift loads, in 1906 the Pennsylvania Railroad introduced battery powered platform trucks for moving luggage at their Altoona, Pennsylvania train station. World War I saw the development of different types of handling equipment in the United Kingdom by Ransomes. This was in due to the labor shortages caused by the war. In 1917 Clark in the United States began developing and using powered tractor, in 1919 the Towmotor Company, and Yale & Towne Manufacturing in 1920, entered the lift truck market in the United States. Continuing development and expanded use of the forklift continued through the 1920s and 1930s, the start of World War II, like World War I before, spurred the use of forklift trucks in the war effort. Following the war, more efficient methods for storing products in warehouses were being implemented, warehouses needed more maneuverable forklift trucks that could reach greater heights and new forklift models were made that filled this need. For example, in 1954 a British company named Lansing Bagnall, now part of KION Group, the development changed the design of warehouses leading to narrower aisles and higher load stacking that increased storage capability. During the 1950s and 1960s operator safety became a concern due to the increasing lifting heights, Safety features such as load back rests and operator cages, called overhead guards, began to be added to forklifts produced in this era. In the late 1980s ergonomic design began to be incorporated in new designs to improve operator comfort, reduce injuries. During the 1990s exhaust emissions from forklift operations began to be addressed which led to emission standards being implemented for forklift manufacturers in various countries, the introduction of AC power forklifts, along with fuel cell technology, are also refinements in continuing forklift development. Forklifts are rated for loads at a maximum weight and a specified forward center of gravity. This information is located on a provided by the manufacturer. In many jurisdictions it is illegal to alter or remove the nameplate without the permission of the forklift manufacturer, an important aspect of forklift operation is that it must have rear-wheel steering
5.
Humvee
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The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, commonly known as the Humvee, is a four-wheel drive military light truck produced by AM General. Primarily used by the United States military, it is used by numerous other countries and organizations. The Humvees widespread use in the Gulf War of 1991, where it negotiated the treacherous desert terrain, since the WWII era Bantam Reconnaissance Car, the United States Army had relied on jeeps to transport small groups of soldiers. The jeep was built around a requirement for a vehicle with a folding windshield that was actually shorter than the Volkswagen Beetle. It seated three with a 660 lb payload and weighed just over one ton, by the 1970s, the U. S. Army had tried larger militarized civilian trucks, but even these no longer satisfied newer requirements. In 1977, Lamborghini developed the Cheetah model in an attempt to meet the Army contract specifications, the specification called for excellent on and off-road performance, the ability to carry a large payload, and improved survivability against indirect fire. Compared to the jeep, it was larger and had a wider track, with a 16 in ground clearance. The new truck was to climb a 60 percent incline and traverse a 40 percent slope, the radiator was to be mounted high, sloping over the engine on a forward-hinged hood. Out of 61 companies that showed interest, only three submitted prototypes, in July 1979, AM General, a subsidiary of American Motors Corporation began preliminary design work. Less than a later, the first prototype was in testing. Chrysler Defense and Teledyne Continental also produced competing designs, in June 1981, the Army awarded AM General a contract for development of several more prototype vehicles to be delivered to the government for another series of tests. The original M998 A0 series had a weight of 5,200 lb, a payload of 2,500 lb, a 6.2 L V-8 diesel engine. The three companies were chosen to design and build eleven HMMWV prototypes, which covered over 600,000 miles in trials which included courses in desert. Ft. Lewis, Washington and the 9th Infantry Division was the unit to employ HMMWV in the new concept of a motorized division. Yakima Training Center in Yakima, Washington was the testing grounds for HMMWVs from 1985 through December 1991, when the motorized concept was abandoned. HMMWVs first saw combat in Operation Just Cause, the U. S. invasion of Panama in 1989, the HMMWV was designed primarily for personnel and light cargo transport behind front lines, not as a front line fighting vehicle. Like the previous jeep, the basic HMMWV has no armor or protection against chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats, nevertheless, losses were relatively low in conventional operations, such as the Gulf War. Vehicles and crews suffered considerable damage and losses during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 due to the nature of the urban engagement
6.
Gulf War
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The Iraqi Armys occupation of Kuwait that began 2 August 1990 was met with international condemnation, and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. US President George H. W. Bush deployed US forces into Saudi Arabia, an array of nations joined the coalition, the largest military alliance since World War II. The great majority of the military forces were from the US, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia paid around US$32 billion of the US$60 billion cost, the war was marked by the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the US network CNN. The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast of images from cameras on board US bombers during Operation Desert Storm. The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait began with an aerial and naval bombardment on 17 January 1991 and this was followed by a ground assault on 24 February. This was a victory for the coalition forces, who liberated Kuwait. The coalition ceased its advance, and declared a ceasefire 100 hours after the campaign started. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, Iraq launched Scud missiles against coalition military targets in Saudi Arabia and against Israel. The following names have been used to describe the conflict itself, Gulf War, a problem with these terms is that the usage is ambiguous, having now been applied to at least three conflicts, see Gulf War. The use of the term Persian Gulf is also disputed, see Persian Gulf naming dispute, with no consensus of naming, various publications have attempted to refine the name. Other language terms include French, la Guerre du Golfe and German, Golfkrieg, German, Zweiter Golfkrieg, French, most of the coalition states used various names for their operations and the wars operational phases. Operation Desert Storm was the US name of the conflict from 17 January 1991. Operation Desert Sabre was the US name for the offensive against the Iraqi Army in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations from 24–28 February 1991, in itself. Operation Desert Farewell was the given to the return of US units and equipment to the US in 1991 after Kuwaits liberation. Operation Granby was the British name for British military activities during the operations, Opération Daguet was the French name for French military activities in the conflict. Operation Friction was the name of the Canadian operations Operazione Locusta was the Italian name for the operations, in addition, various phases of each operation may have a unique operational name. The US divided the conflict into three campaigns, Defense of Saudi Arabian country for the period 2 August 1990, through 16 January 1991
7.
Surveillance
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Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them. The word surveillance comes from a French phrase for watching over, Surveillance is used by governments for intelligence gathering, the prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by organizations to plan and commit crimes such as robbery and kidnapping, by businesses to gather intelligence. Surveillance is often a violation of privacy, and is opposed by civil liberties groups. Liberal democracies have laws which restrict domestic government and private use of surveillance, authoritarian government seldom have any domestic restrictions, and international espionage is common among all types of countries. The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data, there is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. Computers can be a target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software, such as the FBIs Magic Lantern and CIPAV, on a computer system, such software could be installed physically or remotely. The NSA runs a database known as Pinwale, which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners. Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as PRISM, which is a mining system that gives the United States government direct access to information from technology companies. Through accessing this information, the government is able to obtain search history, emails, stored information, live chats, file transfers and this program generated huge controversies in regards to surveillance and privacy, especially from U. S. citizens. The official and unofficial tapping of lines is widespread. Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 National Security Letters ordering phone companies to hand information about their customers calling. About half of these letters requested information on U. S. citizens, human agents are not required to monitor most calls. The StingRay tracker is an example of one of these used to monitor cell phone usage in the United States. Once the phone is connected to the device, there is no way for the user to know that they are being tracked. The operator of the stingray is able to extract information such as location, phone calls, and text messages, a lot of controversy surrounds the StingRay because of its powerful capabilities and the secrecy that surrounds it. Mobile phones are commonly used to collect location data
8.
Virtual reality
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VR also simulates a users physical presence in this environment. A person using virtual reality equipment is able to look around the world, and with high quality VR move about in it. Virtual reality is displayed with a virtual reality headset, VR headsets are head-mounted goggles with a screen in front of the eyes. Programs may include audio and sounds through speakers or headphones, advanced haptic systems may include tactile information, generally known as force feedback in medical, video gaming and military training applications. Some VR systems used in games can transmit vibrations and other sensations to the user through the game controller. Virtual reality also refers to remote communication environments which provide a presence of users with through telepresence and telexistence or the use of a virtual artifact. The immersive environment can be similar to the world in order to create a life-like experience grounded in reality or sci-fi. In 1938, Antonin Artaud described the nature of characters and objects in the theatre as la réalité virtuelle in a collection of essays. The English translation of book, published in 1958 as The Theater. The term artificial reality, coined by Myron Krueger, has been in use since the 1970s, the term virtual reality was used in The Judas Mandala, a 1982 science fiction novel by Damien Broderick. Virtual has had the meaning being something in essence or effect, the term virtual has been used in the computer sense of not physically existing but made to appear by software since 1959. A dictionary definition for cyberspace states that word is a synonym for virtual reality. Virtual reality shares some elements with augmented reality, AR is a type of virtual reality technology that blends what the user sees in their real surroundings with digital content generated by computer software. The additional software-generated images with the virtual scene typically enhance way the real look in some way. Some AR systems use a camera to capture the surroundings or some type of display screen which the user looks at. The Virtual Reality Modelling Language, first introduced in 1994, was intended for the development of worlds without dependency on headsets. The Web3D consortium was founded in 1997 for the development of industry standards for web-based 3D graphics. The consortium subsequently developed X3D from the VRML framework as an archival and these components led to relative affordability for independent VR developers, and lead to the 2012 Oculus Rift kickstarter offering the first independently developed VR headset
9.
Global Positioning System
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The Global Positioning System is a space-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Air Force. The GPS system operates independently of any telephonic or internet reception, the GPS system provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created the system, maintains it, however, the US government can selectively deny access to the system, as happened to the Indian military in 1999 during the Kargil War. The U. S. Department of Defense developed the system and it became fully operational in 1995. Roger L. Easton of the Naval Research Laboratory, Ivan A, getting of The Aerospace Corporation, and Bradford Parkinson of the Applied Physics Laboratory are credited with inventing it. Announcements from Vice President Al Gore and the White House in 1998 initiated these changes, in 2000, the U. S. Congress authorized the modernization effort, GPS III. In addition to GPS, other systems are in use or under development, mainly because of a denial of access. The Russian Global Navigation Satellite System was developed contemporaneously with GPS, GLONASS can be added to GPS devices, making more satellites available and enabling positions to be fixed more quickly and accurately, to within two meters. There are also the European Union Galileo positioning system and Chinas BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, special and general relativity predict that the clocks on the GPS satellites would be seen by the Earths observers to run 38 microseconds faster per day than the clocks on the Earth. The GPS calculated positions would quickly drift into error, accumulating to 10 kilometers per day, the relativistic time effect of the GPS clocks running faster than the clocks on earth was corrected for in the design of GPS. The Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, two American physicists, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, at Johns Hopkinss Applied Physics Laboratory, decided to monitor Sputniks radio transmissions. Within hours they realized that, because of the Doppler effect, the Director of the APL gave them access to their UNIVAC to do the heavy calculations required. The next spring, Frank McClure, the deputy director of the APL, asked Guier and Weiffenbach to investigate the inverse problem — pinpointing the users location and this led them and APL to develop the TRANSIT system. In 1959, ARPA also played a role in TRANSIT, the first satellite navigation system, TRANSIT, used by the United States Navy, was first successfully tested in 1960. It used a constellation of five satellites and could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour, in 1967, the U. S. Navy developed the Timation satellite, which proved the feasibility of placing accurate clocks in space, a technology required by GPS. In the 1970s, the ground-based OMEGA navigation system, based on comparison of signal transmission from pairs of stations. Limitations of these systems drove the need for a more universal navigation solution with greater accuracy, during the Cold War arms race, the nuclear threat to the existence of the United States was the one need that did justify this cost in the view of the United States Congress. This deterrent effect is why GPS was funded and it is also the reason for the ultra secrecy at that time
10.
Radio-frequency identification
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Radio-frequency identification uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronically stored information, Passive tags collect energy from a nearby RFID readers interrogating radio waves. Active tags have a power source such as a battery. Unlike a barcode, the tag need not be within the line of sight of the reader, RFID is one method for Automatic Identification and Data Capture. These concerns resulted in standard specifications development addressing privacy and security issues, ISO/IEC18000 and ISO/IEC29167 use on-chip cryptography methods for untraceability, tag and reader authentication, and over-the-air privacy. ISO/IEC20248 specifies a digital data structure for RFID and barcodes providing data, source. This work is done within ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC31 Automatic identification, in 2014, the world RFID market is worth US$8.89 billion, up from US$7.77 billion in 2013 and US$6.96 billion in 2012. This includes tags, readers, and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs, the market value is expected to rise to US$18.68 billion by 2026. In 1945, Léon Theremin invented a tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with the audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, similar technology, such as the IFF transponder, was routinely used by the allies and Germany in World War II to identify aircraft as friend or foe. Transponders are still used by most powered aircraft to this day, another early work exploring RFID is the landmark 1948 paper by Harry Stockman. Considerable research and development work has to be done before the basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved. Mario Cardullos device, patented on January 23,1973, was the first true ancestor of modern RFID, the basic Cardullo patent covers the use of RF, sound and light as transmission media. The original business plan presented to investors in 1969 showed uses in transportation, banking, security and medical. An early demonstration of reflected power RFID tags, both passive and semi-passive, was performed by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Frayman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1973, the portable system operated at 915 MHz and used 12-bit tags. This technique is used by the majority of todays UHFID and microwave RFID tags, the first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton in 1983. A radio-frequency identification system uses tags, or labels attached to the objects to be identified, two-way radio transmitter-receivers called interrogators or readers send a signal to the tag and read its response. RFID tags can be passive, active or battery-assisted passive
