Random Articles (Page 2)
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π Windy City Heat
Windy City Heat is a made-for-TV reality film produced by Comedy Central. It first aired on October 12, 2003.
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- "Windy City Heat" | 2022-12-14 | 26 Upvotes 16 Comments
π Bat bomb
Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats, which would then disperse and roost in eaves and attics in a 20β40-mile radius (32β64Β km). The incendiaries, which were set on timers, would then ignite and start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper constructions of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.
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- "Bat bomb" | 2017-09-07 | 18 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "Bat bomb" | 2014-11-08 | 252 Upvotes 40 Comments
π Great Oxidation Event
The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), sometimes also called the Great Oxygenation Event, Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, or Oxygen Revolution, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean experienced a rise in oxygen, approximately 2.4Β billion years ago (2.4Β Ga) to 2.1β2.0 Ga during the Paleoproterozoic era. Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggests that biologically induced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O2) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere and changed Earth's atmosphere from a weakly reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing atmosphere, causing almost all life on Earth to go extinct. The cyanobacteria producing the oxygen caused the event which enabled the subsequent development of multicellular forms.
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- "Great Oxidation Event" | 2019-07-21 | 64 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Bidet Shower β Hand Bidet, Commode/Toilet/Bum Shower, Health Faucet, Bum Gun
A bidet showerβalso known as a handheld bidet, commode shower, toilet shower, health faucet, bum shower, shatafa (from the Arabic: Ψ΄ΩΨ·ΩΩΨ§ΩΩΨ© [ΚΙtΛ€ΛtΛ€ΙΛfΙ], "rinser") or bum gunβis a hand-held triggered nozzle that is placed near the toilet and delivers a spray of water used for anal cleansing and cleaning of the genitals after using the toilet for defecation and urination, popularised by Arab nations where the bidet shower is a common bathroom accessory. The device is similar to that of a kitchen sink sprayer.
In predominantly Catholic countries, the Muslim world, in the Eastern Orthodox and Hindu cultures, and in some Protestant countries such as Finland, water is usually used for anal cleansing, using a jet (bidet shower, bidet) or vessel, and a person's hand (in some places only the left hand is used).
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- "Bidet Shower β Hand Bidet, Commode/Toilet/Bum Shower, Health Faucet, Bum Gun" | 2023-07-24 | 22 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86
Ratan Tata (28 December 1937 β 9 October 2024) was an Indian industrialist and philanthropist who served as chairman of Tata Group and Tata Sons from 1990 to 2012, and then as interim chairman from October 2016 through February 2017. In 2008, he received the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour in India. Ratan had previously received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour, in 2000. He passed away on October 9, 2024, following a prolonged illness related to his age.
Ratan Tata was the son of Naval Tata, who was adopted by Ratanji Tata. Ratanji Tata was the son of Jamshedji Tata, the founder of the Tata Group. He graduated from the Cornell University College of Architecture with a bachelor's degree in architecture. He joined Tata in 1961, where he worked on the shop floor of Tata Steel. He later succeeded J. R. D. Tata as chairman of Tata Sons upon the latter's retirement in 1991. During his tenure, the Tata Group acquired Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover, and Corus, in an attempt to turn Tata from a largely India-centric group into a global business. Tata was also a philanthropist.
Tata was a prolific investor and invested in over 30 start-ups, most in a personal capacity and some via his investment company.
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- "Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86" | 2024-10-10 | 387 Upvotes 136 Comments
π Theory X and Theory Y management
Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human work motivation and management. They were created by Douglas McGregor while he was working at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1950s, and developed further in the 1960s. McGregor's work was rooted in motivation theory alongside the works of Abraham Maslow, who created the hierarchy of needs. The two theories proposed by McGregor describe contrasting models of workforce motivation applied by managers in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational communication and organizational development. Theory X explains the importance of heightened supervision, external rewards, and penalties, while Theory Y highlights the motivating role of job satisfaction and encourages workers to approach tasks without direct supervision. Management use of Theory X and Theory Y can affect employee motivation and productivity in different ways, and managers may choose to implement strategies from both theories into their practices.
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- "Theory X and Theory Y management" | 2023-07-01 | 77 Upvotes 36 Comments
π Carrosses Γ Cinq Sols
The carrosses Γ cinq sols (English: five-sol coaches) were the first modern form of public transport in the world, developed by mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal.
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- "Carrosses Γ Cinq Sols" | 2020-11-06 | 35 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Why the Z boson had a different mass at different times of day.
The Large ElectronβPositron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed.
It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. LEP collided electrons with positrons at energies that reached 209 GeV. It was a circular collider with a circumference of 27 kilometres built in a tunnel roughly 100Β m (300Β ft) underground and passing through Switzerland and France. LEP was used from 1989 until 2000. Around 2001 it was dismantled to make way for the Large Hadron Collider, which re-used the LEP tunnel. To date, LEP is the most powerful accelerator of leptons ever built.
Discussed on
- "Why the Z boson had a different mass at different times of day." | 2009-08-08 | 65 Upvotes 22 Comments
π Spaghettification
In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field; it is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components. Within a small region the horizontal compression balances the vertical stretching so that small objects being spaghettified experience no net change in volume.
Stephen Hawking described the flight of a fictional astronaut who, passing within a black hole's event horizon, is "stretched like spaghetti" by the gravitational gradient (difference in strength) from head to toe. The reason this happens would be that the gravity force exerted by the singularity would be much stronger at one end of the body than the other. If one were to fall into a black hole feet first, the gravity at their feet would be much stronger than at their head, causing the person to be vertically stretched. Along with that, the right side of the body will be pulled to the left, and the left side of the body will be pulled to the right, horizontally compressing the person. However, the term "spaghettification" was established well before this. Spaghettification of a star was imaged for the first time in 2018 by researchers observing a pair of colliding galaxies approximately 150 million light-years from Earth.
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- "Spaghettification" | 2021-03-05 | 13 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Amplituhedron
An amplituhedron is a geometric structure introduced in 2013 by Nima Arkani-Hamed and Jaroslav Trnka. It enables simplified calculation of particle interactions in some quantum field theories. In planar N = 4 supersymmetric YangβMills theory, also equivalent to the perturbative topological B model string theory in twistor space, an amplituhedron is defined as a mathematical space known as the positive Grassmannian.
Amplituhedron theory challenges the notion that spacetime locality and unitarity are necessary components of a model of particle interactions. Instead, they are treated as properties that emerge from an underlying phenomenon.
The connection between the amplituhedron and scattering amplitudes is at present a conjecture that has passed many non-trivial checks, including an understanding of how locality and unitarity arise as consequences of positivity. Research has been led by Nima Arkani-Hamed. Edward Witten described the work as "very unexpected" and said that "it is difficult to guess what will happen or what the lessons will turn out to be".
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- "Amplituhedron" | 2019-02-25 | 55 Upvotes 10 Comments