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🔗 Psychology

The half-life of knowledge or half-life of facts is the amount of time that has to elapse before half of the knowledge or facts in a particular area is superseded or shown to be untrue. These coined terms belong to the field of quantitative analysis of science known as scientometrics.

These ideas of half-life applied to different fields differ from the concept of half-life in physics in that there is no guarantee that the knowledge or facts in areas of study are declining exponentially. It is unclear that there is any way to establish what constitutes "knowledge" in a particular area, as opposed to mere opinion or theory.

An engineering degree went from having a half life of 35 years in ca. 1930 to about 10 years in 1960.

A Delphi Poll showed that the half life of psychology as measured in 2016 ranged from 3.3 to 19 years depending on the specialty, with an average of a little over 7 years.

It has also been used in Christian missiology to increase the effectiveness of their teachings.

🔗 Psychology

The narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of British anthropologist Ernest Crawley. In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, a narcissism of minor differences.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Wisconsin 🔗 United States/Massachusetts - Cape Cod and the Islands

Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the eldest daughter born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Ted Kennedy.

In her early young adult years, Rosemary Kennedy experienced seizures and violent mood swings. In response to these issues, her father arranged a prefrontal lobotomy for her in 1941 when she was 23 years of age; the procedure left her permanently incapacitated and rendered her unable to speak intelligibly.

Rosemary Kennedy spent most of the rest of her life being cared for at St. Coletta, an institution in Jefferson, Wisconsin. The truth about her situation and whereabouts was kept secret for decades. While she was initially isolated from her siblings and extended family following her lobotomy, Rosemary did go on to visit them during her later life.

🔗 Human rights 🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 History 🔗 Death 🔗 Politics 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Soviet Union/history of Russia 🔗 Soviet Union/Russia

Mass killings under communist regimes occurred throughout the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them. The higher estimates of mass killings account for the crimes that governments committed against civilians, including executions, the destruction of populations through man-made hunger and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor.

In addition to "mass killings," terms that are used to define such killings include "democide", "politicide", "classicide", and "genocide."

🔗 United States 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Oregon 🔗 Crime 🔗 Religion 🔗 Biology 🔗 Terrorism

The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack was the food poisoning of 751 individuals in The Dalles, Oregon, through the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with Salmonella. A group of prominent followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho) led by Ma Anand Sheela had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first and is the single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history.

Having previously gained political control of Antelope, Oregon, Rajneesh's followers, who were based in nearby Rajneeshpuram, sought election to two of the three seats on the Wasco County Circuit Court that were up for election in November 1984. Fearing they would not gain enough votes, some Rajneeshpuram officials decided to incapacitate voters in The Dalles, the largest population center in Wasco County. The chosen biological agent was Salmonella enterica Typhimurium, which was first delivered through glasses of water to two County Commissioners and then, on a larger scale, at salad bars and in salad dressing.

As a result of the attack, 751 people contracted salmonellosis, 45 of whom were hospitalized, but none died. Although an initial investigation by the Oregon Public Health Division and the Centers for Disease Control did not rule out deliberate contamination, the agents and contamination were only confirmed a year later. On February 28, 1985, Congressman James H. Weaver gave a speech in the United States House of Representatives in which he "accused the Rajneeshees of sprinkling Salmonella culture on salad bar ingredients in eight restaurants".

At a press conference in September 1985, Rajneesh accused several of his followers of participation in this and other crimes, including an aborted plan in 1985 to assassinate a United States Attorney, and he asked state and federal authorities to investigate. Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer set up an interagency task force, composed of Oregon State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and executed search warrants in Rajneeshpuram. A sample of bacteria matching the contaminant that had sickened the town residents was found in a Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory. Two leading Rajneeshpuram officials were convicted on charges of attempted murder and served 29 months of 20-year sentences in a minimum-security federal prison.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Lists

This list ranks the countries of the world by the number of mobile phone numbers in use. Note that it is not the number of phone devices that are being given here, but the number of phone numbers in a country. In some countries, one person might have two mobile phones. Also, some mobile phone numbers may be used by machines as a modem (examples: intrusion detection systems, home automation, leak detection).

🔗 Numbers 🔗 Canada 🔗 Arctic 🔗 Writing systems 🔗 Indigenous peoples of North America 🔗 Canada/Canadian Territories 🔗 Alaska

Kaktovik Iñupiaq numerals are a featural positional numeral system created by Alaskan Iñupiat.

Arabic numeral notation, which was designed for a base-10 numeral system, is inadequate for the Inuit languages, which use a base-20 numeral system. Students from Kaktovik, Alaska invented a base-20 numeral notation in 1994 to rectify this issue, and this system spread among the Alaskan Iñupiat and has been considered in other countries where Inuit languages are spoken.

The image at right shows the digits 0 to 19. Twenty is written as a one and a zero (I0), forty as a two and a zero (V0), four hundred as a one and two zeros (I00), eight hundred as a two and two zeros (V00), etc.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Mexico

The cocoliztli epidemic or the great pestilence is a term given to millions of deaths in the territory of New Spain in present-day Mexico in the 16th century attributed to one or more illnesses collectively called cocoliztli, a mysterious illness characterized by high fevers and bleeding. It ravaged the Mexican highlands in epidemic proportions. The disease became known as Cocoliztli by the native Aztecs, and had devastating effects on the area’s demography, particularly for the indigenous people. Based on the death toll, this outbreak is often referred to as the worst disease epidemic in the history of Mexico. Subsequent outbreaks continued to baffle both Spanish and native doctors, with little consensus among modern researchers on the pathogenesis. However, recent bacterial genomic studies have suggested that Salmonella, specifically a serotype of Salmonella enterica known as Paratyphi C, was at least partially responsible for this initial outbreak. It might have also been an indigenous viral hemorrhagic fever, perhaps exacerbated by the worst droughts to affect that region in 500 years, as well as living conditions for indigenous peoples of Mexico in the wake of the Spanish conquest (c. 1519).

🔗 Biography 🔗 Espionage 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Biography/military biography 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Military history/World War II

Eric Arthur Roberts (18 June 1907 – 17 or 18 December 1972) was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany. Roberts continued to work for the security services after the war, particularly in Vienna, but it was a time of great anxiety in the services because of the suspicions surrounding double agents such as the Cambridge spy ring.

Roberts never felt completely accepted by MI5 because of his social background and a desk role did not suit him as well as his wartime role had. He is the subject of the biography Agent Jack (2018) by Robert Hutton, and his adventures were the inspiration for the novel Our Friends In Berlin by Anthony Quinn and for a major character in the novel Transcription by Kate Atkinson.