1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Nerdcore
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Nerdcore is a genre of hip hop music characterized by themes and subject matter considered to be of general interest to nerds. Self-described nerdcore musician MC Frontalot has the earliest known recorded use of the term in the 2000 song Nerdcore Hiphop, Frontalot, like most nerdcore artists, self-publishes his work and has released much of it for free online. As a niche genre, nerdcore generally holds to the DIY ethic, Music with similar themes, but different musical styles can be found in the filk genres. There are hip hop artists who have recorded compositions which focus on similar topics, conversely, one does not need to concentrate on those topics to be nerdcore, most of the songs by Frontalot do not focus narrowly on stereotypically nerdy topics. The difference is one of self-identification, the group Blackalicious does not identify as nerds. Being more defined by lyrics, nerdcore has no unifying musical sound, one common theme, especially in the early days of the genre, is uncleared sampling. MC Frontalot addressed this directly in his 1999 song Good Old Clyde, sources for samples in nerdcore range from Vanilla Ice to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. YTCrackers Nerdrap Entertainment System is an album made up primarily of samples from 8-bit Nintendo games. Another notable artist, Random, created a dedicated to the Mega Man video games in 2007 titled MegaRan. Several DJs have provided beats and done remixes for multiple artists, most notably Baddd Spellah. Spellah also won a competition in 2004. The earliest known recorded use of the term hip hop was in 2000 by MC Frontalot. Nerdcore had clear influences from geek culture as well, including geek rockers like They Might Be Giants, parodists like Weird Al Yankovic, and others. Despite these influences, nerdcore has separated itself from other types of nerdy music thanks to an unofficial list of criteria that has evolved among fans, aside from making hip hop about geeky things, nerdcore is considered to be an opt-in genre. Only artists who consider themselves to be nerdcore should have the attached to their music. In the summer of 2004 the fledgling genre took a step forward when the popular web comic Penny Arcade held its first convention, The Penny Arcade Expo, in Bellevue. Though the expo was primarily devoted to video and table top gaming, geek-friendly musicians also performed including Penny Arcades official rapper MC Frontalot, the next year, two full concerts took place at the 2005 Penny Arcade Expo and included nerdy hip hop acts MC Frontalot and Optimus Rhyme. After the 2005 expo, all three acts would have the nerdcore label permanently affixed to them, thanks to the popularity of these acts, the nerdcore fan base began to form and in some cases those fans would go on to become nerdcore artists themselves
3.
UNIX System V
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UNIX System V is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983, four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1,2,3, and 4. It was the source of common commercial Unix features. System V is sometimes abbreviated to SysV, as of 2012, the Unix market is divided between three System V variants, IBMs AIX, Hewlett-Packards HP-UX and Oracles Solaris. System V was the successor to 1982s UNIX System III, while AT&T sold their own hardware that ran System V, most customers instead ran a version from a reseller, based on AT&Ts reference implementation. A standards document called the System V Interface Definition outlined the default features, in the 1980s and early-1990s, System V was considered one of the two major versions of UNIX, the other being the Berkeley Software Distribution. Historically, BSD was also commonly called BSD Unix or Berkeley Unix, the dispute had several levels, some technical and some cultural. The divide was roughly between longhairs and shorthairs, programmers and technical people tended to line up with Berkeley and BSD, more business-oriented types with AT&T and System V. While HP, IBM and others chose System V as the basis for their Unix offerings, other such as Sun Microsystems. Throughout its development, though, System V was infused with features from BSD, since the early 1990s, due to standardization efforts such as POSIX and the commercial success of Linux, the division between System V and BSD has become less important. System V, known inside Bell Labs as Unix 5.0, there was never an external release of Unix 4.0, which would have been System IV. This first release of System V was developed by AT&Ts UNIX Support Group, System V also included features such as the vi editor and curses from 4.1 BSD, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, it also improved performance by adding buffer and inode caches. It also added support for communication using messages, semaphores. SVR1 ran on DEC PDP-11 and VAX minicomputers, System V Release 2 was released in April,1984. It added shell functions and the SVID, new kernel features included record and file locking, demand paging, and copy on write. The concept of the base was formalized, and the DEC VAX-11/780 was chosen for this release. The porting base is the original version of a release. Educational source licenses for SVR2 were offered by AT&T for US$800 for the first CPU, a commercial source license was offered for $43,000, with three months of support, and a $16,000 price per additional CPU
4.
Bulletin board system
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A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Many BBSes also offer on-line games, in users can compete with each other. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the form of the World Wide Web, social networks. Low-cost, high-performance modems drove the use of services and BBSes through the early 1990s. Infoworld estimated there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone in 1994, over the next year, many of the leading BBS software providers went bankrupt and tens of thousands of BBSes disappeared. Today, BBSing survives largely as a hobby in most parts of the world. Most BBSes are now accessible over Telnet and typically offer free email accounts, FTP services, IRC, some offer access through packet switched networks, or packet radio connections. A precursor to the bulletin board system was Community Memory, started in August 1973 in Berkeley. Useful microcomputers did not exist at that time, and modems were both expensive and slow, Community Memory therefore ran on a mainframe computer and was accessed through terminals located in several San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods. The poor quality of the original modem connecting the terminals to the mainframe prompted a user to invent the Pennywhistle modem, Community Memory allowed the user to type messages into a computer terminal after inserting a coin, and offered a pure bulletin board experience with public messages only. It did offer the ability to tag messages with keywords, which the user could use in searches, the system acted primarily in the form of a buy and sell system with the tags taking the place of the more traditional classifications. But users found ways to express themselves outside these bounds, unfortunately, the system was expensive to operate, and when their host machine became unavailable and a new one could not be found, the system closed in January 1975. Similar functionality was available to most mainframe users, which might be considered a sort of ultra-local BBS when used in this fashion. Commercial systems, expressly intended to offer features to the public, became available in the late 1970s. Early modems were very simple devices using acoustic couplers to handle telephone operation. The user would first pick up the phone, dial a number, disconnecting at the end of a call required the user to pick up the handset and return it to the phone. With the introduction of microcomputers with expansion slots, like the S-100 bus machines and Apple II, it possible for the modem to communicate instructions. A number of modems of this sort were available by the late 1970s
5.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
6.
Goddard Space Flight Center
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The Goddard Space Flight Center is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1,1959 as NASAs first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D. C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. GSFC, one of ten major NASA field centers, is named in recognition of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, GSFC is a major U. S. laboratory for developing and operating unmanned scientific spacecraft. GSFC conducts scientific investigation, development and operation of space systems, Goddard scientists can develop and support a mission, and Goddard engineers and technicians can design and build the spacecraft for that mission. Mather shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on COBE, past missions managed by GSFC include the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, SMM, COBE, IUE, and ROSAT. Goddard is NASAs first, and oldest, space center and its original charter was to perform five major functions on behalf of NASA, technology development and fabrication, planning, scientific research, technical operations, and project management. The center is organized into directorates, each charged with one of these key functions. Until May 1,1959, NASAs presence in Greenbelt, Maryland was known as the Beltsville Space Center and it was then renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center, after Dr. Robert H. Goddard. Goddard Space Flight Center contributed to Project Mercury, Americas first manned flight program. The Center assumed a role for the project in its early days and managed the first 250 employees involved in the effort. However, the size and scope of Project Mercury soon prompted NASA to build a new Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Project Mercurys personnel and activities were transferred there in 1961. However, the Center focused primarily on designing unmanned satellites and spacecraft for research missions. Goddard pioneered several fields of development, including modular spacecraft design. Goddards Solar Max satellite, launched in 1980, was repaired by astronauts on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, remains in service and continues to grow in capability thanks to its modular design, today, the center remains involved in each of NASAs key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other organization, Goddards partly wooded campus is a few miles northeast of Washington, D. C. in Prince Georges County. The center is on Greenbelt Road, which is Maryland Route 193, baltimore, Annapolis, and NASA Headquarters in Washington are 30–45 minutes away by highway. Greenbelt also has a station with access to the Washington Metro system
7.
Bureau of Land Management
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President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies, the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The mission of the BLM is to sustain the health, diversity, originally BLM holdings were described as land nobody wanted because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits, the agency manages 221 wilderness areas,23 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Landscape Conservation System totaling about 30 million acres. There are more than 63,000 oil and gas wells on BLM public lands, total energy leases generated approximately $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, and Native American groups. The BLMs roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain, France and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, surveyed, during the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies. After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England, France, in the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function, Land was sold so that the government would have money to survive. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted, the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by trial and error, once the territory of Ohio had been surveyed, in 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were finally fulfilled, over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land. Several different types of patents existed and these include cash entry, credit, homestead, Indian, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, railroads, state selections, swamps, town sites, and town lots. A system of land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land that was surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory. This pattern gradually spread across the entire United States, the laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing, exploration, and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil, gas, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees. The Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937, commonly referred as the O&C Act, in 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior. It took several years for new agency to integrate and reorganize
8.
Nissan
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Nissan Motor Company Ltd, usually shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama. The company sells its cars under the Nissan, Infiniti, since 1999, Nissan has been part of the Renault–Nissan Alliance, a partnership between Nissan and French automaker Renault. As of 2013, Renault holds a 43. 4% voting stake in Nissan, Carlos Ghosn serves as CEO of both companies. Taken together, the Renault–Nissan Alliance would be the fourth largest automaker, however Nissan is the leading Japanese brand in China, Russia. Nissan is the worlds largest electric vehicle manufacturer, with sales of more than 275,000 all-electric vehicles as of mid-December 2016. Masujiro Hashimoto founded the Kaishinsha Motor Car Works 1 July 1911, in 1914, the company produced its first car, called DAT. DAT Motors built trucks in addition to the DAT and Datsun passenger cars, beginning in 1918, the first DAT trucks were produced for the military market. At the same time, Jitsuyo Jidosha Co. Ltd. produced small trucks using parts, Commercial operations were placed on hold during Japans participation in World War I, and the company contributed to the war effort. In 1926 the Tokyo-based DAT Motors merged with the Osaka-based Jitsuyo Jidosha Co. Ltd. a. k. a, Jitsuyo Jidosha Seizo to become DAT Jidosha Seizo Co. Ltd Automobile Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in Osaka until 1932, from 1923 to 1925, the company produced light cars and trucks under the name of Lila. In 1931, DAT came out with a new car, called the Datsun Type 11. Later in 1933 after Nissan Group zaibatsu took control of DAT Motors, in 1933, the company name was Nipponized to Jidosha-Seizo Co. Ltd. and was moved to Yokohama. In 1928, Yoshisuke Aikawa founded the holding company Nihon Sangyo, the name Nissan originated during the 1930s as an abbreviation used on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for Nihon Sangyo. This company was the famous Nissan Zaibatsu which included Tobata Casting, at this time Nissan controlled foundries and auto parts businesses, but Aikawa did not enter automobile manufacturing until 1933. The zaibatsu eventually grew to include 74 firms, and became the fourth-largest in Japan during World War II, in 1931, DAT Jidosha Seizo became affiliated with Tobata Casting, and was merged into Tobata Casting in 1933. As Tobata Casting was a Nissan company, this was the beginning of Nissans automobile manufacturing, in 1934, Aikawa separated the expanded automobile parts division of Tobata Casting and incorporated it as a new subsidiary, which he named Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. The shareholders of the new company however were not enthusiastic about the prospects of the automobile in Japan, at this time, Nissan Motor effectively became owned by Nihon Sangyo and Hitachi. In 1935, construction of its Yokohama plant was completed,44 Datsuns were shipped to Asia, Central and South America
9.
Honda
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Honda Motor Co. Ltd. is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles, aircraft, motorcycles, and power equipment. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001, Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world behind General Motors, Volkswagen Group, Toyota, Hyundai Motor Group, Ford, Nissan, and PSA Peugeot Citroën in 2011. Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a luxury brand, Acura. Aside from their automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft and power generators. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and they have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Honda has three joint-ventures in China, in 2013, Honda invested about 5. 7% of its revenues in research and development. Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models, throughout his life, Hondas founder, Soichiro Honda had an interest in automobiles. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where he tuned cars, in 1937, with financing from his acquaintance Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki to make piston rings working out of the Art Shokai garage. After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings to Toyota, Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production of military aircraft propellers. The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company, with a staff of 12 men working in a 16 m2 shack, they built and sold improvised motorized bicycles, using a supply of 500 two-stroke 50 cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines. When the engines ran out, Honda began building their own copy of the Tohatsu engine and this was the Honda A-Type, nicknamed the Bata Bata for the sound the engine made. In 1949, the Honda Technical Research Institute was liquidated for ¥1,000,000, or about US$5,000 today, at about the same time Honda hired engineer Kihachiro Kawashima, and Takeo Fujisawa who provided indispensable business and marketing expertise to complement Soichiro Hondas technical bent. The close partnership between Soichiro Honda and Fujisawa lasted until they stepped down together in October 1973, the first complete motorcycle, with both the frame and engine made by Honda, was the 1949 D-Type, the first Honda to go by the name Dream. Honda Motor Company grew in a time to become the worlds largest manufacturer of motorcycles by 1964. The first production automobile from Honda was the T360 mini pick-up truck, powered by a small 356-cc straight-4 gasoline engine, it was classified under the cheaper Kei car tax bracket. The first production car from Honda was the S500 sports car and its chain-driven rear wheels pointed to Hondas motorcycle origins. Over the next few decades, Honda worked to expand its line and expanded operations. In 1986, Honda introduced the successful Acura brand to the American market in an attempt to ground in the luxury vehicle market
10.
United States Geological Survey
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The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its resources. The organization has four science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology. The USGS is a research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, the USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, the current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is science for a changing world. The agencys previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its anniversary, was Earth Science in the Public Service. Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences, the USGS was created, by a last-minute amendment and it was charged with the classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain. This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the legislation also provided that the Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler surveys be discontinued as of June 30,1879. Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies, after a short tenure, King was succeeded in the directors chair by John Wesley Powell. Administratively, it is divided into a Headquarters unit and six Regional Units, Other specific programs include, Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location, the USGS also runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System. The USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, and it also maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research. It also conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards, USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time, the USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online, since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global, lunar, and planetary exploration and mapping. USGS operates a number of related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program. USGS Water data is available from their National Water Information System database
