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🔗 Biography 🔗 Climate change 🔗 Women 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Sweden 🔗 Autism

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (Swedish: [ˈɡrêːta ˈtʉ̂ːnbærj] (listen); born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who has gained international recognition for promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change. Thunberg is known for her youth and her straightforward speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticizes world leaders for their failure to take sufficient action to address the climate crisis.

Thunberg's activism started after convincing her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their own carbon footprint. In August 2018, at age 15, she started spending her school days outside the Swedish parliament to call for stronger action on climate change by holding up a sign reading Skolstrejk för klimatet (School strike for climate). Soon, other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together, they organised a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were multiple coordinated multi-city protests involving over a million students each. To avoid flying, Thunberg sailed to North America where she attended the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. Her speech there, in which she exclaimed "how dare you", was widely taken up by the press and incorporated into music.

Her sudden rise to world fame has made her both a leader and a target for critics. Her influence on the world stage has been described by The Guardian and other newspapers as the "Greta effect". She has received numerous honours and awards including: honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society; Time magazine's 100 most influential people and the youngest Time Person of the Year; inclusion in the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women (2019) and two consecutive nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize (2019 and 2020).

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Iran 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Islam 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Turkey

A bimaristan (Persian: بيمارستان‎, romanized: bīmārestān; Arabic: بِيْمَارِسْتَان‎, romanized: bīmāristān), also known as dar al-shifa (also darüşşifa in Turkish) or simply maristan, is a hospital in the historic Islamic world.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Mathematics

A nomogram (from Greek νόμος nomos, "law" and γραμμή grammē, "line"), also called a nomograph, alignment chart, or abaque, is a graphical calculating device, a two-dimensional diagram designed to allow the approximate graphical computation of a mathematical function. The field of nomography was invented in 1884 by the French engineer Philbert Maurice d'Ocagne (1862–1938) and used extensively for many years to provide engineers with fast graphical calculations of complicated formulas to a practical precision. Nomograms use a parallel coordinate system invented by d'Ocagne rather than standard Cartesian coordinates.

A nomogram consists of a set of n scales, one for each variable in an equation. Knowing the values of n-1 variables, the value of the unknown variable can be found, or by fixing the values of some variables, the relationship between the unfixed ones can be studied. The result is obtained by laying a straightedge across the known values on the scales and reading the unknown value from where it crosses the scale for that variable. The virtual or drawn line created by the straightedge is called an index line or isopleth.

Nomograms flourished in many different contexts for roughly 75 years because they allowed quick and accurate computations before the age of pocket calculators. Results from a nomogram are obtained very quickly and reliably by simply drawing one or more lines. The user does not have to know how to solve algebraic equations, look up data in tables, use a slide rule, or substitute numbers into equations to obtain results. The user does not even need to know the underlying equation the nomogram represents. In addition, nomograms naturally incorporate implicit or explicit domain knowledge into their design. For example, to create larger nomograms for greater accuracy the nomographer usually includes only scale ranges that are reasonable and of interest to the problem. Many nomograms include other useful markings such as reference labels and colored regions. All of these provide useful guideposts to the user.

Like a slide rule, a nomogram is a graphical analog computation device, and like the slide rule, its accuracy is limited by the precision with which physical markings can be drawn, reproduced, viewed, and aligned. While the slide rule is intended to be a general-purpose device, a nomogram is designed to perform a specific calculation, with tables of values effectively built into the construction of the scales. Nomograms are typically used in applications where the level of accuracy they offer is sufficient and useful. Alternatively, a nomogram can be used to check an answer obtained from another, more exact but possibly error-prone calculation.

Other types of graphical calculators such as intercept charts, trilinear diagrams and hexagonal charts are sometimes called nomograms. Other such examples include the Smith chart, a graphical calculator used in electronics and systems analysis, thermodynamic diagrams and tephigrams, used to plot the vertical structure of the atmosphere and perform calculations on its stability and humidity content. These do not meet the strict definition of a nomogram as a graphical calculator whose solution is found by the use of one or more linear isopleths.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

Holographic data storage is a potential technology in the area of high-capacity data storage. While magnetic and optical data storage devices rely on individual bits being stored as distinct magnetic or optical changes on the surface of the recording medium, holographic data storage records information throughout the volume of the medium and is capable of recording multiple images in the same area utilizing light at different angles.

Additionally, whereas magnetic and optical data storage records information a bit at a time in a linear fashion, holographic storage is capable of recording and reading millions of bits in parallel, enabling data transfer rates greater than those attained by traditional optical storage.

🔗 United States 🔗 Politics 🔗 Politics/American politics 🔗 Elections and Referendums 🔗 United States/U.S. presidential elections

The 1876 United States presidential election was the 23rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1876, in which Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. It was one of the most contentious and controversial presidential elections in American history, and gave rise to the Compromise of 1877 by which the Democrats conceded the election to Hayes in return for an end to Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. After a controversial post-election process, Hayes was declared the winner.

After President Ulysses S. Grant declined to seek a third term despite previously being expected to do so, Congressman James G. Blaine emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination. However, Blaine was unable to win a majority at the 1876 Republican National Convention, which settled on Governor Hayes of Ohio as a compromise candidate. The 1876 Democratic National Convention nominated Governor Tilden of New York on the second ballot.

The results of the election remain among the most disputed ever. Although it is not disputed that Tilden outpolled Hayes in the popular vote, after a first count of votes, Tilden had won 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 votes from four states unresolved: in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state, while in Oregon, one elector was replaced after being declared illegal for being an "elected or appointed official". The question of who should have been awarded these electoral votes is the source of the continued controversy.

An informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes; in return for the Democrats' acquiescence to Hayes' election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise in effect ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who proceeded to disenfranchise black voters thereafter.

The 1876 election is the second of five presidential elections in which the person who won the most popular votes did not win the election, but the only such election in which the popular vote winner received a majority (rather than a plurality) of the popular vote. To date, it remains the election that recorded the smallest electoral vote victory (185–184), and the election that yielded the highest voter turnout of the eligible voting age population in American history, at 81.8%. Despite not becoming president, Tilden was the first Democratic presidential nominee since James Buchanan in 1856 to win the popular vote and the first since Franklin Pierce in 1852 to do so in an outright majority (In fact, Tilden received a slightly higher percentage than Pierce in 1852, despite the fact that Pierce won in a landslide).

🔗 Journalism

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended to be humorous rather than the literal truth. The adage fails to make sense with questions that are more open-ended than strict yes-no questions.

The maxim has been cited by other names since 1991, when a published compilation of Murphy's Law variants called it "Davis's law", a name that also crops up online (such as cited by linguist Mark Liberman), without any explanation of who Davis was. It has also been referred to as the "journalistic principle" and in 2007 was referred to in commentary as "an old truism among journalists".

🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Astronomy/Astronomical objects

Tabby's Star (also known as Boyajian's Star and WTF Star, and designated KIC 8462852 in the Kepler Input Catalog) is an F-type main-sequence star in the constellation Cygnus approximately 1,470 light-years (450 pc) from Earth. Unusual light fluctuations of the star, including up to a 22% dimming in brightness, were discovered by citizen scientists as part of the Planet Hunters project. In September 2015, astronomers and citizen scientists associated with the project posted a preprint of an article describing the data and possible interpretations. The discovery was made from data collected by the Kepler space telescope, which observed changes in the brightness of distant stars to detect exoplanets.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the star's large irregular changes in brightness as measured by its light curve, but none to date fully explain all aspects of the curve. One explanation is that an "uneven ring of dust" orbits Tabby's Star. In another explanation, the star's luminosity is modulated by changes in the efficiency of heat transport to its photosphere, so no external obscuration is required. A third hypothesis, based on a lack of observed infrared light, posits a swarm of cold, dusty comet fragments in a highly eccentric orbit; however, the notion that disturbed comets from such a cloud could exist in high enough numbers to obscure 22% of the star's observed luminosity has been doubted. Another hypothesis is that a large number of small masses in "tight formation" are orbiting the star. Furthermore, spectroscopic study of the system has found no evidence for coalescing material or hot close-in dust or circumstellar matter from an evaporating or exploding planet within a few astronomical units of the mature central star. It has also been hypothesized that the changes in brightness could be signs of activity associated with intelligent extraterrestrial life constructing a Dyson swarm; however, further analysis based on data through the end of 2017 showed wavelength-dependent dimming consistent with dust but not an opaque object such as an alien megastructure, which would block all wavelengths of light equally.

Tabby's Star is not the only star that has large irregular dimmings, but other such stars include young stellar objects called YSO dippers, which have different dimming patterns. An example of such an object is EPIC 204278916.

New fluctuations ran from mid-May 2017 until July 2018, assuming their continuance in late-December 2017 to mid-February 2018 when obscured by the Sun.

In September 2019, astronomers reported that the observed dimmings of Tabby's Star may have been produced by fragments resulting from the disruption of an orphaned exomoon. An overall study of other similar stars has been presented. In January 2021, a distant stellar-mass companion was reported, making Tabby's Star a binary stellar system.

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Some of the many ways to read Wikipedia while offline:

• Kiwix: (§ Kiwix) – index of images (2024)
• XOWA: (§ XOWA) – index of images (2015)
• WikiTaxi: § WikiTaxi (for Windows)
• aarddict: § Aard Dictionary / Aard 2
• BzReader: § BzReader and MzReader (for Windows)
• WikiFilter: § WikiFilter
• Wikipedia on rockbox: § Wikiviewer for Rockbox
• Selected Wikipedia articles as a printed document: Help:Printing

Some of them are mobile applications – see "List of Wikipedia mobile applications".

🔗 Computing 🔗 Geography

Null Island is a name for the area around the point where the prime meridian and the equator cross, located in international waters in the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) off the west African coast. In the WGS84 datum, this is at zero degrees latitude and longitude (0°N 0°E), and is the location of a buoy. The name 'Null Island' serves as both a joke based around the suppositional existence of an island there, and also as a name to which coordinates erroneously set to 0,0 are assigned in placenames databases in order to more easily find and fix them. The nearest land is a small islet offshore of Ghana, between Akwidaa and Dixcove at 4°45′30″N 1°58′33″W, 307.8 nmi (354.2 mi; 570.0 km) to the north.

🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Hungary 🔗 Journalism 🔗 Project-independent assessment

The Telefon Hírmondó (also Telefonhírmondó, generally translated as "Telephone Herald") was a "telephone newspaper" located in Budapest, Hungary, which, beginning in 1893, provided news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. It was both the first and the longest surviving telephone newspaper system, although from 1 December 1925 until its termination in 1944 it was primarily used to retransmit programmes broadcast by Magyar Rádió.

Three decades before the development of radio broadcasting, the Telefon Hírmondó was the first service to electronically deliver a wide range of spoken and musical programming to a diverse audience. Although its inventor envisioned that the technology could be eventually expanded to serve a national or international audience, the technical limitations of the time ultimately limited its service area to just the city of Budapest.