Apr 29

Vendor lock-out

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Vendor lock-out occurs when a software vendor uses proprietary formats, lack of configurability or other means to prevent a user from using the vendor’s product in conjunction with products from other vendors.

The opposite of lock-out is integrable. This is not the same as integrated. Many products that suffer from lock-out are described as “integrated solutions”, but often do not allow further integration. Lock-out tactics are beneficial to vendors as they coerce users into purchasing more products from that same vendor.

Users of free software, “free” in the FSF sense, are generally protected from vendor lock-out. Because any motivated programmer can modify free software, lock-out is a temporary situation, and its market benefits are unlikely to outweigh the repercussions from users who may switch distributors.


Examples

  • A word processor which does not allow the user to use an external spell-checker, grammar checker, etc. — the word processor locks out other tools.
  • An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that will not let you use external tools, such as source-code analysis or compilers for other languages.


See also

  • Vendor lock-in
Apr 29

Meanings of asteroid names (119001-120000)

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Asteroids not yet given a name have not been included in this list.

Name Provisional Designation Source of Name
119001…120000
There are as yet no named asteroids in this span of numbers.
119001-119100
119101-119200
119201-119300
119301-119400
119401-119500
119501-119600
119601-119700
119701-119800
119801-119900
119901-120000
Apr 28

Annular dark-field imaging

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Annular dark-field imaging is a method of mapping samples in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). These images are formed by collecting scattered electrons with an annular dark-field detector in dedicated scanning transmission electron microscopes.

External link: CHREM: HAADF. http://www.asu.edu/clas/csss/chrem/techniques/HAADF.html. Retrieved February 23, 2006.

Apr 28

Central line

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Central line may refer to:

  • For the medical term, see central venous catheter
  • For the London Underground railway line, see Central Line
  • For the railway line in Tanzania, see Central Line (Tanzania)

Apr 27

Darren Monahan

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Darren Monahan, Chief Information Officer and Producer, Obsidian Entertainment - Darren has been working in the game industry for 10 years, having worked for Interplay Entertainment in various capacities, including a senior producer for Black Isle Studios, manager of Quality Assurance, and a programmer on many of Interplay’s titles. As a producer, Darren managed the internal and external development of six published products, including the entire Icewind Dale and series of titles. For a summary of titles Darren was associated with, please view his MobyGames profile.
Darren was also crowned Prom King 1991 of Ocean View High School, Huntington Beach, California.

Apr 27

Scanning laser ophthalmoscopy

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Scanning laser ophthalmoscopy is a method of examination of the eye. It uses the technique of confocal laser scanning microscopy for diagnostic imaging of retina or cornea of the human eye.

It is helpful in the diagnosis of glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other retinal disorders.

It has been combined with adaptive optics technology to provide sharper images of the retina.<ref name=”Roorda”> “Roorda Lab” — (last accesed: 9 December 2006)</ref><ref name=”adapt”> “Optos Enters Licence Agreement With University of Rochester For Using Adaptive Optics in Retinal Imaging” Published on October 25, 2006—(last accesed: 9 December 2006)</ref>


See also

  • Ophthalmoscopy


Notes

<references />


External links

  • Optos website
Apr 27

Kogota Station

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is a railway station on the Tōhoku Main Line in Misato, Miyagi. It is also the eastern terminus of the East Riku'u Line and the western terminus of the Ishinomaki Line. Most Kesennuma Line trains use Kogota station as their operating terminus, though the line physically ends at Maeyachi Station.


Lines

  • JR East

    • Tōhoku Main Line
    • East Riku’u Line
    • Ishinomaki Line


Surrounding area

  • Kogota District Transportation Office
  • Kogota Post Office


History

  • April 16, 1890: Station begins operation on the Japanese Railroad (now the Tōhoku Main Line).
  • October 28, 1912: The Ishinomaki Line is opened to traffic.
  • April 20, 1913: The Riku’u Line (now the East Riku’u Line) is opened to traffic.


Adjacent stations

Apr 27

Yaesu FT-107M

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The Yaesu FT-107M is an amateur radio from the 1980s with many of the features found on common radios.

The modes include:

  • LSB
  • USB
  • CW.W
  • CW.N
  • FSK
  • AM

Notably the FT-107M has memory for storing frequencies/ scanning for active frequencies.
Parts for this radio are very hard to get, with old sets becoming vintage models now.
The FT-107M is a 100 watt output radio with digital and analogue modes.


See also

Yaesu (brand)

Apr 27

Low island

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A low island is, in geology (and sometimes in archaeology), an island of coral origin. The term applies whether the island was formed as a result of sedimentation upon a coral reef or of the uplifting of such islands. The term is used to distinguish such islands from high islands, whose origins are volcanic.

This distinction is important to understand, as there are some low islands, such as Makatea, Nauru, Niue and Banaba, which rise several hundred feet above sea level, while a number of high islands rise no more than a few feet above sea level, often classified as “rocks”.

Low islands are the kind of islands which ring the lagoons of atolls.

The two types of islands are often found in proximity to each other, especially among the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, where low islands are found on the fringing reefs that surround most high islands.

Low islands have poor, sandy soil and little fresh water which makes it difficult to farm here. They don’t support human inhabitation as well as high islands. The people that do live on low islands survive by mostly fishing.

Apr 26

Slit lamp

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The slit lamp is an instrument consisting of a high-intensity light source that can be focused to shine as a slit. It is used in conjunction with a microscope. The lamp facilitates an examination which looks at anterior segment, or frontal structures, of the human eye, which includes the eyelid, sclera, conjunctiva, iris, natural crystalline lens, and cornea. The binocular slit-lamp examination provides stereoscopic magnified view of the eye structures in striking detail, enabling exact anatomical diagnoses to be made for a variety of eye conditions. Combined with special lenses like Goldmann 3-mirror lens, Gonioscopy single-mirror/ Zeiss 4-mirror lens for angle structures and +90D lens, +78D lens, +66D lens & Hruby (-56D) lens, the examination of retinal structures is accomplished in detail.

While a patient is seated in the examination chair, he rests his chin and forehead on a support to steady the head. Using the biomicroscope, the optometrist then proceeds to examine the patient’s eye. A fine strip of paper, stained with fluorescein, an orange-colored dye, may be touched to the side of the eye; this stains the tear film on the surface of the eye to aid examination. The dye is naturally rinsed out of the eye by tears.

The subsequent test may involve placing drops in the eye in order to dilate the pupils. The drops take about 15 to 20 minutes to work, after which the examination is repeated, allowing the back of the eye to be examined. Patients will experience some light sensitivity for a few hours after this exam, and the dilating drops may also cause increased pressure in the eye, leading to nausea and pain; although this is very rare, patients experiencing these symptoms are advised to immediately seek medical attention.

Adults need no special preparation for the test, however children may need some preparation, depending on age, interests, previous experiences, and level of trust.

The slit lamp exam may detect many diseases of the eye, including:

  • Cataract
  • Conjunctivitis
  • Corneal injury
  • Fuchs’ dystrophy
  • Keratoconus
  • Macular degeneration
  • Presbyopia
  • Retinal detachment
  • Retinal vessel occlusion
  • Retinitis pigmentosa
  • Sjögren’s syndrome
  • Uveitis
  • Wilson’s disease (Kayser-Fleischer ring)
Apr 26

Mutual Security Treaty

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  1. REDIRECTTreaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan
Apr 24

STED microscopy

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Stimulated Emission Depletion microscopy, or STED microscopy, is a technique that has overcome the limits imposed by diffraction with standard confocal laser scanning microscopes and conventional far-field optical microscopes <ref>Hell, S.W., et al. (1994). Breaking the diffraction resolution limit by stimulated emission: stimulated-emission-depletion fluorescence microscopy. Opt. Lett. 19, 780-782</ref>.

A confocal laser scanning microscope uses a focused laser beam to illuminate a small part of the sample being observed. The laser is tuned to a frequency that excites fluorescence from a dye in the sample, and light from the small region being excited is observed by a detector. The resolution of a confocal scanning microscope is limited to the spot size to which the excitation spot can be focused. This size depends on system parameters, but is typically approximately the wavelength of the excitation beam.

Stimulated Emission Depletion microscopy reduces the size of the excited region by using a very short excitation pulse which is immediately followed by a “depletion” pulse, tuned to an emission line of the fluorescent dye. This depletion pulse causes stimulated emission, moving electrons from the excited state (from which fluorescence occurs) to a lower energy state. The wavefront of the depletion beam is altered in such a way that it is focused to a ring instead of a spot, featuring a dark spot of zero laser intensity in the center. While this dark spot is itself diffraction-limited, the intensity distribution is continuous and is zero only at the center. Therefore, using a bright depletion pulse causes almost all of the electrons excited by the excitation pulse to return to the ground state, leaving only the region of the sample very close to the axis of the depletion beam excited. After both pulses have been sent, fluorescence from the remaining excited dye molecules is detected by the microscope. As of 2006, resolution improvements over confocal laser scanning microscopy of up to 12-fold have been reported<ref>Donnert, G., et al. (2006). Macromolecular-scale resolution in biological
fluorescence microscopy. PNAS 103, 11440-11445</ref>.

STED is the first implementation of a more general concept known as RESOLFT and under ideal conditions, the improvement
of the spatial resolution is given by an equation common to all methods based on the concept.
Another RESOLFT-based technique proposed early on was Ground State Depletion microscopy<ref>Hell, S.W. (1995). Ground-state depletion fluorescence microscopy, a concept for breaking the diffraction resolution limit. Appl. Phys. B 60, 495-497</ref>, which uses an excitation pulse to boost off-axis ground-state electrons to a long-lived higher energy state before exciting remaining ground-state electrons with a fluorescence excitation pulse.


References

<references/>


External Links

  • Overview at the Department of NanoBiophotonics at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry ([1]).
  • Brief summary of the RESOLFT equations developed by the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry.
Apr 23

Houdini Animation Software

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Houdini Animation Software is a powerful suite of animation software that is created by Side Effects Software, a company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


External links

  • Side Effects Software official page
  • A website with tools, tips and tricks for Houdini users.
  • A wiki for the Houdini community.
Apr 23

Strategic early warning system

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The aim of an Strategic Early Warning System (SEWS) is to assist organizations in dealing with discontinuities or strategic “surprises”. By detecting “weak signals” (Igor Ansoff, 1975), which can be perceived as important discontinuities in an organizational environment, SEWS allows organizations to react strategically ahead of time.


Underlying theory

The underlying assumption of SEWS is that discontinuities do not emerge without warning. These warning signs can be described as “weak signals”. The concept of “weak signals” (Ansoff, 1975) aims at early detection of those signals which could lead to strategic surprises and to an event which has the potential to jeopardise an organization’s strategy. Furthermore, the concept of a SEWS is intended to constitute an important part of a strategic management system, operating real-time in an organization, and assisting in identifying the new, which emerges as “weak signals”.

Detecting “weak signals” is achieved by scanning the organizational environment. The concept of environmental scanning (Aguilar,1967) describes a process whereby the environment in which an organization operates is systematically scanned for relevant information. The purpose is to identify early signals of possible environmental change and to detect environmental change already underway.


Phases

The ideal SEWS process has three phases.

  • Phase 1 is characterised by the information gathering of “weak signals”, or trends and issues. The scanning itself relies primarily on examining various media sources, the technique of content analysis (Nasbitt, 1982).

The scanning activity is complemented by monitoring trends and issues that have already drawn attention.

  • Phase 2 is one of diagnosis, which is characterized by three steps:

    • In-depth analysis of the trend or issue, examining the core and the various contexts of this phenomenon. The aim is to gain an impression of the possible potential development of an issue or trend.
    • The second step has several objectives.
      • The attempt should be made to think creatively about how the particular trend or issue could evolve.
      • The nature of the contexts needs to be examined in order to cluster several trends or issues, thus providing an understanding of the mutual influences on and of trends and issues.
      • It is important, due to the limited resources in any organization, to identify and select those trends and issues that are particularly relevant.
  • Phase 3 describes the formulation of an appropriate strategy to react to the trends and issues which have been identified and labelled as relevant.


References

  • Aguilar, F. J. (1967), Scanning the Business Environment, The Macmillian Company, New York.
  • Ansoff, H. I. (1975), “Managing Strategic Surprise by Response to Weak Signals”, California Management Review, vol. XVIII no. 2, pp. 21-33.
  • Ansoff, H. I. (1980), “Strategic Issue Management”, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 1, pp. 131-148.
  • Nasbitt, J. (1982), Megatrends, Warner Books, New York.
  • Gilad, B. (2003), Early Warning: Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies”, AMACOM


Also See

Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals

Apr 22

Paper lantern

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Paper lanterns come in various shapes and sizes, as well as various methods of construction. The easiest form, is simply a paper bag with a candle placed inside, although more complicated lanterns consist of a collapsible bamboo or metal frame of hoops, covered with tough paper.

Often associated with parties, paper lanterns are common in China and Japan, and similarly, in Chinatowns, where they are often hung outside of businesses to attract attention. In Japan they are called 提灯 (chōchin) and there is a special style of lettering called chōchin moji used to write on them.

Placing candles or tea lights in a succession of small white paper bags (known as luminaria or farolitos) is a common tradition in Hispanic communities during Christmas.

In China, paper lanterns can be classified into 5 distinct classes; the Baby’s Bottom is the miniature class, often used in modern times with Christmas lights. The second class is the Rolling Paper, the tall, cylindrical lanterns often associated with restaurants and bars. The third class is the Tomato Light also known as Big Red; the classic round mid-size lantern. The fourth class is the Crystal Magic; the variously-shaped geometric lamps constructed of many square and triangular panes. The last is known as Buddha’s Gastronomy; the large and extra large lanterns used to decorate temples and for show at festivals.

Red paper lanterns were once associated with brothels, and this is reflected in the term red light district. In Japan, red lanterns are often used as advertisements hung just outside bars and restaurants.

High-wattage paper lanterns are commonly used in motion picture productions to provide soft, edgeless light to a scene.

Apr 22

Cana (unit of length)

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A cana was a unit of length used in the former Crown of Aragon. The exact meaning was not consistent but the use in Barcelona was a distance of 1.5708 metres.

Apr 21

Sputter coating

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Sputter coating in microscopy is a process of covering a specimen with a very thin layer of heavy metal, generally a gold/palladium (Au/Pd) mixture. This coating increases the ability of a specimen to conduct electricity and emit secondary electrons when in a scanning electron microscope, acting as a “stain” for electron microscopy. Biological specimens, composed largely of carbon compounds, are usually poor emitters of secondary electrons due to the low atomic number of carbon. Rather than absorbing electrons from the electron source of the microscope and then emitting electrons for detection, carbon compounds tend to collect a charge.


References

Apr 20

.qa

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.qa is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Qatar. It’s the only top-level domain (ccTLD) which begins with Q, one of the rarest letters in English.


External links

  • IANA .qa whois information
Apr 20

Fill character

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In computer terminology, a fill character is a character transmitted solely for the purpose of consuming time. It does this by filling a timeslot on a data transmission line which would otherwise be forced to be idle (empty). In this way, fill characters provide a simple way of timing required idle times.

Fill characters are usually used in response to some real-world limitation. For example, mechanical computer printers such as the earliest dot matrix printers may have been able to print 30 characters per second, but when a “carriage return” character was received and the printhead began returning to the left margin, there was a noticeable delay before the printing of the next line could begin. Unlike modern printers, these early printers contained essentially no buffering, so there would be no place to store the characters which would be received while the printhead was in the process of returning to the left margin. Instead, one or more fill characters would be transmitted to cover this time.

In its strictest definition, fill characters cause no action to be performed at all; they simply consume time. The ASCII “null” character is commonly used for this purpose. In actual practice with printers, though, one of the time slots that would otherwise contain a fill character was usually used to contain the “line-feed” character that caused the paper to advance by one line. For some printers (such as teleprinters), this was all the “filling” that was needed.

As described above, printers commonly required fill characters when the carriage was returned to the left margin. With other equipment, fill characters were occasionally required in other circumstances. For example the VT05 video terminal sometimes required fill characters when a “scroll up” operation was performed; the process of shuffling data in the shift register memory of the VT05 was slow.

In a similar fashion, communications protocols often require fill characters at points when processing must be performed.

Apr 20

Pisanosaurus

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Pisanosaurus mertii (the name comes from “Pisano”, who was an associate of the finder, and “saurus” meaning lizard or reptile) is a primitive bipedal Ornithischian dinosaur from the Late Triassic.

Pisanosaurus was 3.2 feet (1 meter) in length and 12 inches (30.48 centimeters) in height. Its weight estimate is just under 8.8 pounds (four kilograms). These estimates vary due to the incompleteness of the fossil.

Pisanosaurus is known from a fragmented skeleton found in Argentina. It is very basal within Ornithischia; the postcrania seem to lack any good ornithischian synapomorphy; it has even been suggested the fossil is a chimera.


References

  • R. M. Casamiquela, 1967. Un nuevo dinosaurio ornitisquio triásico (Pisanosaurus mertii; Ornithopoda) de la Formación Ischigualasto, Argentina. Ameghiniana 4(2):47-64


External links

  • Pisanosaurus in The Dinosaur Encyclopaedia at Dino Russ’ Lair