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projected-00012024-030 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General%20relativity | General relativity | Horizons | General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second order partial differential equations.
Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes classical gravity, can be seen as a prediction of general relativity for the almost flat spacetime geometry around stationary mass distributions. Some predictions of general relativity, however, are beyond Newton's law of universal gravitation in classical physics. These predictions concern the passage of time, the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light, and include gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift of light, the Shapiro time delay and singularities/black holes. So far, all tests of general relativity have been shown to be in agreement with the theory. The time dependent solutions of general relativity enable us to talk about the history of the universe and have provided the modern framework for cosmology, thus leading to the discovery of the Big Bang and cosmic microwave background radiation. Despite the introduction of a number of alternative theories, general relativity continues to be the simplest theory consistent with experimental data.
Reconciliation of general relativity with the laws of quantum physics remains a problem, however, as there is a lack of a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity. It is not yet known how gravity can be unified with the three non-gravitational forces: strong, weak and electromagnetic.
Einstein's theory has astrophysical implications, including the prediction of black holes—regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape from them. Black holes are the end-state for massive stars. Microquasars and active galactic nuclei are believed to be stellar black holes and supermassive black holes. It also predicts gravitational lensing, where the bending of light results in multiple images of the same distant astronomical phenomenon. Other predictions include the existence of gravitational waves, which have been observed directly by the physics collaboration LIGO and other observatories. In addition, general relativity has provided the base of cosmological models of an expanding universe.
Widely acknowledged as a theory of extraordinary beauty, general relativity has often been described as the most beautiful of all existing physical theories. | Using global geometry, some spacetimes can be shown to contain boundaries called horizons, which demarcate one region from the rest of spacetime. The best-known examples are black holes: if mass is compressed into a sufficiently compact region of space (as specified in the hoop conjecture, the relevant length scale is the Schwarzschild radius), no light from inside can escape to the outside. Since no object can overtake a light pulse, all interior matter is imprisoned as well. Passage from the exterior to the interior is still possible, showing that the boundary, the black hole's horizon, is not a physical barrier.
Early studies of black holes relied on explicit solutions of Einstein's equations, notably the spherically symmetric Schwarzschild solution (used to describe a static black hole) and the axisymmetric Kerr solution (used to describe a rotating, stationary black hole, and introducing interesting features such as the ergosphere). Using global geometry, later studies have revealed more general properties of black holes. With time they become rather simple objects characterized by eleven parameters specifying: electric charge, mass–energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, and location at a specified time. This is stated by the black hole uniqueness theorem: "black holes have no hair", that is, no distinguishing marks like the hairstyles of humans. Irrespective of the complexity of a gravitating object collapsing to form a black hole, the object that results (having emitted gravitational waves) is very simple.
Even more remarkably, there is a general set of laws known as black hole mechanics, which is analogous to the laws of thermodynamics. For instance, by the second law of black hole mechanics, the area of the event horizon of a general black hole will never decrease with time, analogous to the entropy of a thermodynamic system. This limits the energy that can be extracted by classical means from a rotating black hole (e.g. by the Penrose process). There is strong evidence that the laws of black hole mechanics are, in fact, a subset of the laws of thermodynamics, and that the black hole area is proportional to its entropy. This leads to a modification of the original laws of black hole mechanics: for instance, as the second law of black hole mechanics becomes part of the second law of thermodynamics, it is possible for black hole area to decrease—as long as other processes ensure that, overall, entropy increases. As thermodynamical objects with non-zero temperature, black holes should emit thermal radiation. Semi-classical calculations indicate that indeed they do, with the surface gravity playing the role of temperature in Planck's law. This radiation is known as Hawking radiation (cf. the quantum theory section, below).
There are other types of horizons. In an expanding universe, an observer may find that some regions of the past cannot be observed ("particle horizon"), and some regions of the future cannot be influenced (event horizon). Even in flat Minkowski space, when described by an accelerated observer (Rindler space), there will be horizons associated with a semi-classical radiation known as Unruh radiation. | [
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projected-00064300-009 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart%20Simpson | Bart Simpson | Bartmania | Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional character in the American animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening created and designed Bart while waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on his comic strip, Life in Hell, but instead decided to create a new set of characters. While the rest of the characters were named after Groening's family members, Bart's name is an anagram of the word brat. After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for two years, the Simpson family received its own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989. Bart has appeared in every Simpsons episode except "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
At ten years old, Bart is the eldest child and only son of Homer and Marge, and the brother of Lisa and Maggie. Bart's most prominent and popular character traits are his mischievousness, rebelliousness and disrespect for authority. Hallmarks of the character include his chalkboard gags in the opening sequence; his prank calls to Moe; and his catchphrases "Eat my shorts", "¡Ay, caramba!", "Don't have a cow, man!", and "I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?". However, with the exception of "Ay, caramba!", these hallmarks have been retired or are not often used. Bart has appeared in other media relating to The Simpsons – including video games, The Simpsons Movie, The Simpsons Ride, commercials, and comic books – and inspired an entire line of merchandise.
In casting, Cartwright originally planned to audition for the role of Lisa, while Yeardley Smith tried out for Bart. Smith's voice was considered too high for a boy, so she was given the role of Lisa. Cartwright found Lisa uninteresting, so she instead auditioned for Bart, which she thought was a better role.
During the first two seasons of The Simpsons, Bart was the show's protagonist and "Bartmania" ensued, spawning Bart Simpson-themed merchandise touting his rebellious attitude and pride at underachieving, which caused many parents and educators to cast him as a bad role model for children. Around the third season, the role of the protagonist was taken over by his father, and series started to focus more on the family as a whole, though Bart still remains a prominent breakout character. Time named Bart one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, and he was named "entertainer of the year" in 1990 by Entertainment Weekly. Cartwright has won several awards for voicing Bart, including a Primetime Emmy Award in 1992 and an Annie Award in 1995. In 2000, Bart, along with the rest of his family, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. | In 1990, Bart quickly became one of the most popular characters on television in what was termed "Bartmania". He became the most prevalent Simpsons character on memorabilia, such as T-shirts. In the early 1990s, millions of T-shirts featuring Bart were sold; as many as one million were sold on some days. Believing Bart to be a bad role model, several American public schools banned T-shirts featuring Bart next to captions such as "I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?" and "Underachiever ('And proud of it, man!')". The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated $2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales. The success of Bart Simpson merchandise inspired an entire line of black market counterfeit items, especially T-shirts. Some featured Bart announcing various slogans, others depicted redesigns of the character, including "Teenage Mutant Ninja Bart, Air Simpson Bart, [and] RastaBart". Matt Groening generally did not object to bootleg merchandise, but took exception to a series of "Nazi Bart" shirts which depicted Bart in Nazi uniform or as a white power skinhead. 20th Century Fox sued the creator of the shirts, who eventually agreed to stop making them.
Bart became so associated with Fox that, when bidding in 1993 to show pro football, the network had to assure the NFL and reporters that the character would not announce games. Due to the show's success, over the summer of 1990 Fox decided to switch The Simpsons timeslot so that it would move from 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday night to the same time on Thursday, where it would compete with The Cosby Show on NBC, the number one show at the time. Through the summer, several news outlets published stories about the supposed "Bill vs. Bart" rivalry. The August 31, 1990 issue of Entertainment Weekly featured a picture of Bill Cosby wearing a Bart Simpson T-shirt. "Bart Gets an 'F' (season two, 1990) was the first episode to air against The Cosby Show, and it received a lower Nielsen rating, tying for eighth behind The Cosby Show, which had an 18.5 rating. The rating is based on the number of household televisions that were tuned into the show, but Nielsen Media Research estimated that 33.6 million viewers watched the episode, making it the number one show in terms of actual viewers that week. At the time, it was the most watched episode in the history of the Fox Network, and it is still the highest rated episode in the history of The Simpsons. Because of his popularity, Bart was often the most promoted member of the Simpson family in advertisements for the show, even for episodes in which he was not involved in the main plot.
Bart was described as "television's king of 1990", "television's brightest new star" and an "undiminished smash". Entertainment Weekly named Bart the "entertainer of the year" for 1990, writing that "Bart has proved to be a rebel who's also a good kid, a terror who's easily terrorized, and a flake who astonishes us, and himself, with serious displays of fortitude." In the United States congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial elections of 1990, Bart was one of the most popular write-in candidates, and in many areas was second only to Mickey Mouse amongst fictional characters. In the 1990 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Bart made his debut as one of the giant helium-filled balloons for which the parade is known. The Bart Simpson balloon has appeared at every parade since. This was referenced in The Simpsons in the episode "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", which aired the same day as the parade, where Homer tells Bart, "If you start building a balloon for every flash-in-the-pan cartoon character, you turn the parade into a farce!" Meanwhile, behind and unbeknownst to him, the television briefly shows a Bart Simpson balloon.
The album The Simpsons Sing the Blues was released in September 1990 and was a success, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and becoming certified 2× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The first single from the album was the pop rap song "Do the Bartman", performed by Nancy Cartwright and released on November 20, 1990. The song was written by Bryan Loren, a friend of Michael Jackson. Jackson was a fan of The Simpsons, especially Bart, and had called the producers one night offering to write Bart a number one single and do a guest spot on the show. Jackson eventually guest starred in the episode "Stark Raving Dad" (season three, 1991) under the pseudonym John Jay Smith. While the song was never officially released as a single in the United States, it was successful in the United Kingdom. In 1991 it was the number one song in the UK for three weeks from February 16 to March 9 and was the seventh best-selling song of the year. It sold half a million copies and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry on February 1, 1991. | [
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projected-09702578-000 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%20%E2%88%92%202%20%2B%203%20%E2%88%92%204%20%2B%20%E2%8B%AF | 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ⋯ | Introduction | In mathematics, 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ··· is an infinite series whose terms are the successive positive integers, given alternating signs. Using sigma summation notation the sum of the first m terms of the series can be expressed as
The infinite series diverges, meaning that its sequence of partial sums, , does not tend towards any finite limit. Nonetheless, in the mid-18th century, Leonhard Euler wrote what he admitted to be a paradoxical equation:
A rigorous explanation of this equation would not arrive until much later. Starting in 1890, Ernesto Cesàro, Émile Borel and others investigated well-defined methods to assign generalized sums to divergent series—including new interpretations of Euler's attempts. Many of these summability methods easily assign to a "value" of . Cesàro summation is one of the few methods that do not sum , so the series is an example where a slightly stronger method, such as Abel summation, is required.
The series 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... is closely related to Grandi's series . Euler treated these two as special cases of the more general sequence , where and respectively. This line of research extended his work on the Basel problem and leading towards the functional equations of what are now known as the Dirichlet eta function and the Riemann zeta function. | [] | [
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projected-00360245-010 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Sun%20Also%20Rises | The Sun Also Rises | Writing style | The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work" and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
The novel is a roman à clef, the characters are based on people in Hemingway's circle and the action is based on events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the Pyrenees. Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation"—considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I—was in fact resilient and strong. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature and the concept of masculinity. His spare writing style, combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, demonstrates his "Iceberg Theory" of writing. | The novel is well known for its style, which is variously described as modern, hard-boiled, or understated. As a novice writer and journalist in Paris, Hemingway turned to Ezra Pound—who had a reputation as "an unofficial minister of culture who acted as mid-wife for new literary talent"—to mark and blue-ink his short stories. From Pound, Hemingway learned to write in the modernist style: he used understatement, pared away sentimentalism, and presented images and scenes without explanations of meaning, most notably at the book's conclusion, in which multiple future possibilities are left for Brett and Jake. The scholar Anders Hallengren writes that because Hemingway learned from Pound to "distrust adjectives," he created a style "in accordance with the esthetics and ethics of raising the emotional temperature towards the level of universal truth by shutting the door on sentiment, on the subjective."
F. Scott Fitzgerald told Hemingway to "let the book's action play itself out among its characters." Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin writes that, in taking Fitzgerald's advice, Hemingway produced a novel without a central narrator: "Hemingway's book was a step ahead; it was the modernist novel." When Fitzgerald advised Hemingway to trim at least 2500 words from the opening sequence, which was 30 pages long, Hemingway wired the publishers telling them to cut the opening 30 pages altogether. The result was a novel without a focused starting point, which was seen as a modern perspective and critically well received.
Wagner-Martin speculates that Hemingway may have wanted to have a weak or negative hero as defined by Edith Wharton, but he had no experience creating a hero or protagonist. At that point his fiction consisted of extremely short stories, not one of which featured a hero. The hero changed during the writing of The Sun Also Rises: first the matador was the hero, then Cohn was the hero, then Brett, and finally Hemingway realized "maybe there is not any hero at all. Maybe a story is better without any hero." Balassi believes that in eliminating other characters as the protagonist, Hemingway brought Jake indirectly into the role of the novel's hero.
As a roman à clef, the novel based its characters on living people, causing scandal in the expatriate community. Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker writes that "word-of-mouth of the book" helped sales. Parisian expatriates gleefully tried to match the fictional characters to real identities. Moreover, he writes that Hemingway used prototypes easily found in the Latin Quarter on which to base his characters. The early draft identified the characters by their living counterparts; Jake's character was called Hem, and Brett's was called Duff.
Although the novel is written in a journalistic style, Frederic Svoboda writes that the striking thing about the work is "how quickly it moves away from a simple recounting of events." Jackson Benson believes that Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices for life in general. For example, Benson says that Hemingway drew out his experiences with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" Hemingway believed that the writer could describe one thing while an entirely different thing occurs below the surface—an approach he called the iceberg theory, or the theory of omission.
Balassi says Hemingway applied the iceberg theory better in The Sun Also Rises than in any of his other works, by editing extraneous material or purposely leaving gaps in the story. He made editorial remarks in the manuscript that show he wanted to break from the stricture of Gertrude Stein's advice to use "clear restrained writing." In the earliest draft, the novel begins in Pamplona, but Hemingway moved the opening setting to Paris because he thought the Montparnasse life was necessary as a counterpoint to the later action in Spain. He wrote of Paris extensively, intending "not to be limited by the literary theories of others, [but] to write in his own way, and possibly, to fail." He added metaphors for each character: Mike's money problems, Brett's association with the Circe myth, Robert's association with the segregated steer. It wasn't until the revision process that he pared down the story, taking out unnecessary explanations, minimizing descriptive passages, and stripping the dialogue, all of which created a "complex but tightly compressed story."
Hemingway said that he learned what he needed as a foundation for his writing from the style sheet for The Kansas City Star, where he worked as cub reporter. The critic John Aldridge says that the minimalist style resulted from Hemingway's belief that to write authentically, each word had to be carefully chosen for its simplicity and authenticity and carry a great deal of weight. Aldridge writes that Hemingway's style "of a minimum of simple words that seemed to be squeezed onto the page against a great compulsion to be silent, creates the impression that those words—if only because there are so few of them—are sacramental." In Paris Hemingway had been experimenting with the prosody of the King James Bible, reading aloud with his friend John Dos Passos. From the style of the biblical text, he learned to build his prose incrementally; the action in the novel builds sentence by sentence, scene by scene and chapter by chapter.
The simplicity of his style is deceptive. Bloom writes that it is the effective use of parataxis that elevates Hemingway's prose. Drawing on the Bible, Walt Whitman and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway wrote in deliberate understatement and he heavily incorporated parataxis, which in some cases almost becomes cinematic. His skeletal sentences were crafted in response to Henry James's observation that World War I had "used up words," explains Hemingway scholar Zoe Trodd, who writes that his style is similar to a "multi-focal" photographic reality. The syntax, which lacks subordinating conjunctions, creates static sentences. The photographic "snapshot" style creates a collage of images. Hemingway omits internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) in favor of short declarative sentences, which are meant to build, as events build, to create a sense of the whole. He also uses techniques analogous to cinema, such as cutting quickly from one scene to the next, or splicing one scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap as though responding to instructions from the author and create three-dimensional prose. Biographer James Mellow writes that the bullfighting scenes are presented with a crispness and clarity that evoke the sense of a newsreel.
Hemingway also uses color and visual art techniques to convey emotional range in his descriptions of the Irati River. In Translating Modernism: Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Ronald Berman compares Hemingway's treatment of landscape with that of the post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. During a 1949 interview, Hemingway told Lillian Ross that he learned from Cézanne how to "make a landscape." In comparing writing to painting he told her, "This is what we try to do in writing, this and this, and woods, and the rocks we have to climb over." The landscape is seen subjectively—the viewpoint of the observer is paramount. To Jake, landscape "meant a search for a solid form .... not existentially present in [his] life in Paris." | [
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projected-01055890-003 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable%20energy | Sustainable energy | Environmental impacts | Energy is sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Most definitions of sustainable energy include considerations of environmental aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions and social and economic aspects such as energy poverty. Renewable energy sources such as wind, hydroelectric power, solar, and geothermal energy are generally far more sustainable than fossil fuel sources. However, some renewable energy projects, such as the clearing of forests to produce biofuels, can cause severe environmental damage. The role of non-renewable energy sources in sustainable energy has been controversial. Nuclear power is a low-carbon source whose historic mortality rates are comparable to wind and solar, but its sustainability has been debated because of concerns about radioactive waste, nuclear proliferation, and accidents. Switching from coal to natural gas has environmental benefits, including a lower climate impact, but may lead to a delay in switching to more sustainable options. Carbon capture and storage can be built into power plants to remove their carbon dioxide () emissions, but is expensive and has seldom been implemented.
Fossil fuels provide 85% of the world's energy consumption and the energy system is responsible for 76% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Around 790 million people in developing countries lack access to electricity and 2.6 billion rely on polluting fuels such as wood or charcoal to cook. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels consistent with the 2015 Paris Agreement will require a system-wide transformation of the way energy is produced, distributed, stored, and consumed. The burning of fossil fuels and biomass is a major contributor to air pollution, which causes an estimated 7 million deaths each year. Therefore, the transition to a low-carbon energy system would have strong co-benefits for human health. Pathways exist to provide universal access to electricity and clean cooking in ways that are compatible with climate goals, while bringing major health and economic benefits to developing countries.
In proposed climate change mitigation pathways that are compatible with limiting global warming to , the world rapidly phases out coal-fired power plants, produces more electricity from clean sources such as wind and solar, and shifts towards using electricity instead of fuels in sectors such as transport and heating buildings. For some energy-intensive technologies and processes that are difficult to electrify, many pathways describe a growing role for hydrogen fuel produced from low-emission energy sources. To accommodate larger shares of variable renewable energy, electrical grids require flexibility through infrastructure such as energy storage. To make deep reductions in emissions, infrastructure and technologies that use energy, such as buildings and transport systems, would need to be changed to use clean forms of energy and also to conserve energy. Some critical technologies for eliminating energy-related greenhouse gas emissions are not yet mature.
Wind and solar energy generated 8.5% of worldwide electricity in 2019. This share has grown rapidly while costs have fallen and are projected to continue falling. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 2.5% of world gross domestic product (GDP) would need to be invested in the energy system each year between 2016 and 2035 to limit global warming to . Well-designed government policies that promote energy system transformation can lower greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. In many cases they also increase energy security. Policy approaches include carbon pricing, renewable portfolio standards, phase-outs of fossil fuel subsidies, and the development of infrastructure to support electrification and sustainable transport. Funding research, development, and demonstration of new clean energy technologies is also an important role of government. | The current energy system contributes to many environmental problems, including climate change, air pollution, biodiversity loss, the release of toxins into the environment, and water scarcity. As of 2019, 85% of the world's energy needs are met by burning fossil fuels. Energy production and consumption are responsible for 76% of annual human-caused greenhouse gas emissions as of 2018. The 2015 international Paris Agreement on climate change aims to limit global warming to well below and preferably to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F); achieving this goal will require that emissions be reduced as soon as possible and reach net-zero by mid-century.
The burning of fossil fuels and biomass is a major source of air pollution, which causes an estimated 7 million deaths each year. Fossil-fuel burning in power plants, vehicles, and factories is the main source of emissions that combine with oxygen in the atmosphere to cause acid rain. Air pollution is the second-leading cause of death from non-infectious disease. An estimated 99% of the world's population lives with levels of air pollution that exceed the World Health Organization recommended limits.
Cooking with polluting fuels such as wood, animal dung, coal, or kerosene is responsible for nearly all indoor air pollution, which causes an estimated 1.6 to 3.8 million deaths annually, and also contributes significantly to outdoor air pollution. Health effects are concentrated among women, who are likely to be responsible for cooking, and young children.
Environmental impacts extend beyond the by-products of combustion. Oil spills at sea harm marine life and may cause fires which release toxic emissions. Around 10% of global water use goes to energy production, mainly for cooling in thermal energy plants. In dry regions, this contributes to water scarcity. Bioenergy production, coal mining and processing, and oil extraction also require large amounts of water. Excessive harvesting of wood and other combustible material for burning can cause serious local environmental damage, including desertification.
In 2021, UNECE published a lifecycle analysis of the environmental impact of numerous electricity generation technologies, accounting for the following: resource use (minerals, metals); land use; resource use (fossils); water use; particulate matter; photochemical ozone formation; ozone depletion; human toxicity (non-cancer); ionising radiation; human toxicity (cancer); eutrophication (terrestrial, marine, freshwater); ecotoxicity (freshwater); acidification; climate change. | [
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projected-00019603-004 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan%20Project | Manhattan Project | Bomb design concepts | The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the placename gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $ billion in ). Over 90 percent of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10 percent for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than thirty sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
The Project led to the development of two types of atomic bombs, both developed concurrently, during the war: a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium, so a simpler gun-type called Little Boy was developed that used uranium-235, an isotope that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural uranium. Because it is chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and has almost the same mass, separating the two proved difficult. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Scientists conducted most of this work at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
In parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium, which researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered in 1940. After the feasibility of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, was demonstrated in 1942 at the Metallurgical Laboratory in the University of Chicago, the Project designed the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the production reactors at the Hanford Site in Washington state, in which uranium was irradiated and transmuted into plutonium. The plutonium was then chemically separated from the uranium, using the bismuth phosphate process. The Fat Man plutonium implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design and development effort by the Los Alamos Laboratory.
The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project's tight security, Soviet atomic spies successfully penetrated the program.
The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico's Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a month later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with Manhattan Project personnel serving as bomb assembly technicians and weaponeers on the attack aircraft. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947. | Compton asked theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer of the University of California to take over research into fast neutron calculations—the key to calculations of critical mass and weapon detonation—from Gregory Breit, who had quit on 18 May 1942 because of concerns over lax operational security. John H. Manley, a physicist at the Metallurgical Laboratory, was assigned to assist Oppenheimer by contacting and coordinating experimental physics groups scattered across the country. Oppenheimer and Robert Serber of the University of Illinois examined the problems of neutron diffusion—how neutrons moved in a nuclear chain reaction—and hydrodynamics—how the explosion produced by a chain reaction might behave. To review this work and the general theory of fission reactions, Oppenheimer and Fermi convened meetings at the University of Chicago in June and at the University of California in July 1942 with theoretical physicists Hans Bethe, John Van Vleck, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, Robert Serber, Stan Frankel, and Eldred C. (Carlyle) Nelson, the latter three former students of Oppenheimer, and experimental physicists Emilio Segrè, Felix Bloch, Franco Rasetti, John Henry Manley, and Edwin McMillan. They tentatively confirmed that a fission bomb was theoretically possible.
There were still many unknown factors. The properties of pure uranium-235 were relatively unknown, as were those of plutonium, an element that had only been discovered in February 1941 by Glenn Seaborg and his team. The scientists at the (July 1942) Berkeley conference envisioned creating plutonium in nuclear reactors where uranium-238 atoms absorbed neutrons that had been emitted from fissioning uranium-235 atoms. At this point no reactor had been built, and only tiny quantities of plutonium were available from cyclotrons at institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis. Even by December 1943, only two milligrams had been produced. There were many ways of arranging the fissile material into a critical mass. The simplest was shooting a "cylindrical plug" into a sphere of "active material" with a "tamper"—dense material that would focus neutrons inward and keep the reacting mass together to increase its efficiency. They also explored designs involving spheroids, a primitive form of "implosion" suggested by Richard C. Tolman, and the possibility of autocatalytic methods, which would increase the efficiency of the bomb as it exploded.
Considering the idea of the fission bomb theoretically settled—at least until more experimental data was available—the 1942 Berkeley conference then turned in a different direction. Edward Teller pushed for discussion of a more powerful bomb: the "super", now usually referred to as a "hydrogen bomb", which would use the explosive force of a detonating fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in deuterium and tritium. Teller proposed scheme after scheme, but Bethe refused each one. The fusion idea was put aside to concentrate on producing fission bombs. Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. Bethe calculated that it could not happen, and a report co-authored by Teller showed that "no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started." In Serber's account, Oppenheimer mentioned the possibility of this scenario to Arthur Compton, who "didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document that went to Washington" and was "never laid to rest". | [
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projected-12806049-003 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaam%21 | Whaam! | Description | Whaam! is a 1963 diptych painting by the American artist Roy Lichtenstein. It is one of the best-known works of pop art, and among Lichtenstein's most important paintings. Whaam! was first exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City in 1963, and purchased by the Tate Gallery, London, in 1966. It has been on permanent display at Tate Modern since 2006.
The left-hand panel shows a fighter plane firing a rocket that, in the right-hand panel, hits a second plane which explodes in flames. Lichtenstein adapted the image from several comic-book panels. He transformed his primary source, a panel from a 1962 war comic book, by presenting it as a diptych while altering the relationship of the graphical and narrative elements. Whaam! is regarded for the temporal, spatial and psychological integration of its two panels. The painting's title is integral to the action and impact of the painting, and displayed in large onomatopoeia in the right panel.
Lichtenstein studied as an artist before and after serving in the United States Army during World War II. He practiced anti-aircraft drills during basic training, and he was sent for pilot training but the program was canceled before it started. Among the topics he tackled after the war were romance and war. He depicted aerial combat in several works. Whaam! is part of a series on war that he worked on between 1962 and 1964, and along with As I Opened Fire (1964) is one of his two large war-themed paintings. | Whaam! depicts a fighter aircraft in the left panel firing a rocket into an enemy plane in the right panel, which disintegrates in a vivid red-and-yellow explosion. The cartoon style is emphasized by the use of the onomatopoeic lettering "WHAAM!" in the right panel, and a yellow-boxed caption with black lettering at the top of the left panel. The textual exclamation "WHAAM!" can be considered the graphic equivalent of a sound effect. This was to become a characteristic of his work—like others of his onomatopoeic paintings that contain exclamations such as Bratatat! and Varoom!
Whaam! is one of Lichtenstein's series of war images, typically combining vibrant colors with an expressive narrative. Whaam! is very large, measuring 1.7 m × 4.0 m (5 ft 7 in × 13 ft 4 in). It is less abstract than As I Opened Fire, another of his war scenes. Lichtenstein employs his usual comic-book style: stereotyped imagery in bright primary colors with black outlines, coupled with imitations of mechanical printer's Ben-Day dots. The use of these dots, which were invented by Benjamin Day to simulate color variations and shading, are considered Lichtenstein's "signature method". Whaam! departs from Lichtenstein's earlier diptychs such as Step-on-Can with Leg and Like New, in that the panels are not two variations of the same image.
Although Lichtenstein strove to remain faithful to the source images, he constructed his paintings in a traditional manner, starting with a sketch which he adjusted to improve the composition and then projected on to a canvas to make the finished painting. In the case of Whaam!, the sketch is on two pieces of paper, and the finished work is painted with Magna acrylic and oil paint on canvas. Although the transformation from a single-panel conception into a diptych painting occurred during the initial sketch, the final work varies from the sketch in several ways. The sketch suggests that the "WHAAM!" motif would be colored white, although it is yellow in the finished work. Lichtenstein enlarged the main graphical subject of each panel (the plane on the left and the flames on the right), bringing them closer together as a result.
Lichtenstein built up the image with multiple layers of paint. The paint was applied using a scrub brush and handmade metal screen to produce Ben-Day dots via a process that left physical evidence behind. The Ben-Day dots technique enabled Lichtenstein to give his works a mechanically reproduced feel. Lichtenstein said that the work is "supposed to look like a fake, and it achieves that, I think".
Lichtenstein split the composition into two panels to separate the action from its consequence. The left panel features the attacking plane—placed at a diagonal to create a sense of depth—below the text balloon, which Lichtenstein has relegated to the margin above the plane. In the right panel, the exploding plane—depicted head-on—is outlined by the flames, accompanied by the bold exclamation "WHAAM!". Although separate, with one panel containing the missile launch and the other its explosion, representing two distinct events, the two panels are clearly linked spatially and temporally, not least by the horizontal smoke trail of the missile. Lichtenstein commented on this piece in a 10 July 1967, letter: "I remember being concerned with the idea of doing two almost separate paintings having little hint of compositional connection, and each having slightly separate stylistic character. Of course there is the humorous connection of one panel shooting the other."
Lichtenstein altered the composition to make the image more compelling, by making the exploding plane more prominent compared to the attacking plane than in the original. The smoke trail of the missile becomes a horizontal line. The flames of the explosion dominate the right panel, but the pilot and the airplane in the left panel are the narrative focus. They exemplify Lichtenstein's painstaking detailing of physical features such as the aircraft's cockpit. The other element of the narrative content is a text balloon that contains the following text: "I pressed the fire control ... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky ..." This is among the text believed to have been written by All-American Men of War editor Robert Kanigher. The yellow word "WHAAM!", altered from the red in the original comic-book panel and white in the pencil sketch, links the yellow of the explosion below it with the textbox to the left and the flames of the missile below the attacking plane.
Lichtenstein's borrowings from comics mimicked their style while adapting their subject matter. He explained that "Signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful and vital about commercial art." Rebecca Bengal at PBS wrote that Whaam!'''s graphic clarity exemplifies the ligne claire style associated with Hergé, a cartoonist whose influence Lichtenstein acknowledged. Lichtenstein was attracted to using a cool, formal style to depict emotive subjects, leaving the viewer to interpret the artist's intention. He adopted a simplified color scheme and commercial printing-like techniques. The borrowed technique was "representing tonal variations with patterns of colored circles that imitated the half-tone screens of Ben Day dots used in newspaper printing, and surrounding these with black outlines similar to those used to conceal imperfections in cheap newsprint." Lichtenstein once said of his technique: "I take a cliche and try to organize its forms to make it monumental."
Reception
The painting was, for the most part, well received by art critics when first exhibited. A November 1963 Art Magazine review by Donald Judd described Whaam! as one of the "broad and powerful paintings" of the 1963 exhibition at Castelli's Gallery. In his review of the exhibition, The New York Times art critic Brian O'Doherty described Lichtenstein's technique as "typewriter pointillism ... that laboriously hammers out such moments as a jet shooting down another jet with a big BLAM". According to O'Doherty, the result was "certainly not art, [but] time may make it so", depending on whether it could be "rationalized ... and placed in line for the future to assimilate as history, which it shows every sign of doing." The Tate Gallery in London acquired the work in 1966, leading to heated argument amongst their trustees and some vocal members of the public. The purchase was made from art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, whose asking price of £4,665 (£ in currency) was reduced by negotiation to £3,940 (£ in currency). Some Tate trustees opposed the acquisition, among them sculptor Barbara Hepworth, painter Andrew Forge and the poet and critic Herbert Read. Defending the acquisition, art historian Richard Morphet, then an assistant keeper at the Tate, suggested that the painting addresses several issues and painterly styles at the same time: "history painting, Baroque extravagance, and the quotidian phenomenon of mass-circulation comic strips." The Times in 1967 described the acquisition as a "very large and spectacular painting". The Tate's director, Norman Reid, later said that the work aroused more public interest than any of its acquisitions since World War II.
In 1968, Whaam! was included in the Tate's first solo exhibition of Lichtenstein's work. The showing attracted 52,000 visitors, and was organized with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which later hosted the exhibition from 4 November to 17 December 1967, before it traveled to three other museums.
Analysis and interpretation
For José Pierre, Whaam! represents Lichtenstein's 1963 expansion "into the 'epic' vein". Keith Roberts, in a 1968 Burlington Magazine article, described the explosion as combining "art nouveau elegance with a nervous energy reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism". Wendy Steiner believes the work is Lichtenstein's most successful and harmonious comic-based composition. She sees the narrative and graphic elements as complementary: the action and spatial alignment lead the viewer's eye from left to right so as to emphasize the relationship between the action and its explosive consequence. The ellipses of the text balloon present a progression which culminates with a "WHAAM!". The "coincidence of pictorial and verbal order" are clear for the Western viewer with the explanatory text beginning in the upper left and action vector moving from the left foreground to the right background, culminating in a graphical explosion in tandem with a narrative exclamation. Steiner says the striking incongruity of the two panels—the left panel appearing to be "truncated", while the right depicts a centralized explosion—enhances the work's narrative power.
Lichtenstein's technique has been characterized by Ernst A. Busche as "the enlargement and unification of his source material ... on the basis of strict artistic principles". Extracted from a larger narrative, the resulting stylized image became in some cases a "virtual abstraction". By recreating their minimalistic graphic techniques, Lichtenstein reinforced the artificial nature of comic strips and advertisements. Lichtenstein's magnification of his source material made his impersonally drawn motifs seem all the more empty. Busche also says that although a critique of modern industrial America may be read into these images, Lichtenstein "would appear to accept the environment as revealed by his reference material as part of American capitalist industrial culture".
David McCarthy contrasted Lichtenstein's "dispassionate, detached and oddly disembodied" presentation of aerial combat with the work of H.C. Westermann, for whom the experience of military service in World War II instilled a need to horrify and shock. In contrast, Lichtenstein registers his "comment on American civilization" by scaling up inches-high comic book images to the oversized dimensions of history painting. Laura Brandon saw an attempt to convey "the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life" by depicting a shocking scene of combat as a banal Cold War act.
Carol Strickland and John Boswell say that by magnifying the comic book panels to an enormous size with dots, "Lichtenstein slapped the viewer in the face with their triviality." H. H. Arnason noted that Whaam! presents "limited, flat colors and hard, precise drawing," which produce "a hard-edge subject painting that documents while it gently parodies the familiar hero images of modern America." The flat and highly finished style of planned brushstrokes can be seen as pop art's reaction against the looseness of abstract expressionism. Alastair Sooke says that the work can be interpreted as a symbolic self-portrait in which the pilot in the left panel represents Lichtenstein "vanquishing his competitors in a dramatic art-world dogfight" by firing a missile at the colorful "parody of abstract painting" in the right panel.
According to Ernesto Priego, while the work adapts a comic-book source, the painting is neither a comic nor a comics panel, and "its meaning is solely referential and post hoc." It directs the attention of its audience to features such as genre and printing methods. Visually and narratively, the original panel was the climactic element of a dynamic page composition. Lichtenstein emphasizes the onomatopoeia while playing down articulated speech by removing the speech balloon. According to Priego, "by stripping the comics panel from its narrative context, Whaam! is representative in the realm of fine art of the preference of the image-icon over image-narrative".Whaam! is sometimes said to belong to the same anti-war genre as Picasso's Guernica, a suggestion dismissed by Bradford R. Collins. Instead, Collins views the painting as a revenge fantasy against Lichtenstein's first wife Isabel, conceived as it was during their bitter divorce battle (the couple separated in 1961 and divorced in 1965).
Legacy
Marla F. Prather observed that Whaam!'s grand scale and dramatic depiction contributed to its position as a historic work of pop art. With As I Opened Fire, Lichtenstein's other monumental war painting, Whaam! is regarded as the culmination of Lichtenstein's dramatic war-comics works, according to Diane Waldman. It is widely described as either Lichtenstein's most famous work, or, along with Drowning Girl, as one of his two most famous works. Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick describe it, along with Warhol's Marilyn Monroe prints, as one of the most famous works of pop art. Gianni Versace once linked the two iconic pop art images via his gown designs. According to Douglas Coupland, the World Book Encyclopedia used pictures of Warhol's Monroes and Whaam! to illustrate its Pop art entry.
Comic books were in turn affected by the cultural impact of pop art. By the mid-1960s, some comic books were displaying a new emphasis on garish colors, emphatic sound effects and stilted dialogue—the elements of comic book style that had come to be regarded as camp—in an attempt to appeal to older, college-age readers who appreciated pop art. Gravett observed that the "simplicity and outdatedness [of comic books] were ripe for being mocked".Whaam! was one of the key works exhibited in a major Lichtenstein retrospective in 2012–2013 that was designed, according to Li-mei Hoang, to demonstrate "the importance of Lichtenstein's influence, his engagement with art history and his enduring legacy as an artist". In his review of the Lichtenstein Retrospective at the Tate Modern, Adrian Searle of The Guardian—who was generally unenthusiastic about Lichtenstein's work—credited the work's title with accurately describing its graphic content: "Whaam! goes the painting, as the rocket hits, and the enemy fighter explodes in a livid, comic-book roar." Daily Telegraph critic Alastair Smart wrote a disparaging review in which he acknowledged Lichtenstein's reputation as a leading figure in "Pop Art's cheeky assault on the swaggering, self-important Abstract Expressionists", whose works Smart said Whaam! mimicked by its huge scale. Smart said the work was neither a positive commentary on the fighting American spirit nor a critique, but was notable for marking "Lichtenstein's incendiary impact on the US art scene".
Detractors have raised concerns over Lichtenstein's appropriation, in that he directly references imagery from other sources in Whaam! and other works of the period. Some have denigrated it as mere copying, to which others have countered that Lichtenstein altered his sources in significant, creative ways. In response to claims of plagiarism, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has noted that publishers have never sued for copyright infringement, and that they never raised the issue when Lichtenstein's comics-derived work first gained attention in the 1960s. Other criticism centers on Lichtenstein's failure to credit the original artists of his sources; Ernesto Priego implicates National Periodicals in the case of Whaam!, as the artists were never credited in the original comic books.
In Alastair Sooke's 2013 BBC Four documentary that took place in front of Whaam!'' at the Tate Modern, British comic book artist Dave Gibbons disputed Sooke's assertion that Lichtenstein's painting improved upon Novick's panel, saying: "This to me looks flat and abstracted, to the point of view that to my eyes it's confusing. Whereas the original has got a three-dimensional quality to it, it's got a spontaneity to it, it's got an excitement to it, and a way of involving the viewer that this one lacks." Gibbons has parodied Lichtenstein's derivation of the Novick work. | [
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projected-42943433-000 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%20men%20of%20the%20Minch | Blue men of the Minch | Introduction | The blue men of the Minch, also known as storm kelpies ( ), are mythological creatures inhabiting the stretch of water between the northern Outer Hebrides and mainland Scotland, looking for sailors to drown and stricken boats to sink. They appear to be localised to the Minch and surrounding areas to the north and as far east as Wick, unknown in other parts of Scotland and without counterparts in the rest of the world.
Apart from their blue colour, the mythical creatures look much like humans, and are about the same size. They have the power to create storms, but when the weather is fine they float sleeping on or just below the surface of the water. The blue men swim with their torsos raised out of the sea, twisting and diving as porpoises do. They are able to speak, and when a group approaches a ship its chief may shout two lines of poetry to the master of the vessel and challenge him to complete the verse. If the skipper fails in that task then the blue men will attempt to capsize his ship.
Suggestions to explain the mythical blue men include that they may be a personification of the sea, or originate with the Picts, whose painted bodies may have given the impression of men raising themselves out of the water if they were seen crossing the sea in boats that might have resembled kayaks. The genesis of the blue men may alternatively lie with the North African slaves the Vikings took with them to Scotland, where they spent the winter months close to the Shiant Isles in the Minch. | [] | [
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projected-00850072-003 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown%20%28magazine%29 | Unknown (magazine) | Influence | Unknown (also known as Unknown Worlds) was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknowns first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Campbell required his authors to avoid simplistic horror fiction and insisted that the fantasy elements in a story be developed logically: for example, Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think describes a world in which there is a scientific explanation for the existence of werewolves. Similarly, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea series, about a modern American who finds himself in the worlds of various mythologies, depicts a system of magic based on mathematical logic. Other notable works included several novels by L. Ron Hubbard and short stories such as Manly Wade Wellman's "When It Was Moonlight" and Fritz Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure", the first in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.
Unknown was forced to a bimonthly schedule in 1941 by poor sales and canceled in 1943 when wartime paper shortages became so acute that Campbell had to choose between turning Astounding into a bimonthly or ending Unknown. The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful, and in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley it was responsible for the creation of the modern fantasy publishing genre. | Unknown was, along with Weird Tales, an important early influence on the fantasy genre. In the foreword to From Unknown Worlds, in 1948, Campbell commented that fantasy before Unknown had been too much infused with "gloom and terror"; his approach in Unknown had been to assume that the "creatures of mythology and folklore" could be characters in an amusing tale as easily as they could be made part of a horror story. Horror stories, he said, had a place, but "horror injected with a sharp and poisoned needle is just as effective as when applied with the blunt-instrument technique of the so-called Gothic horror tale". Campbell insisted on the same rational approach to fantasy that he required of his science fiction writers, and in the words of Clareson, this led to the destruction of "not only the prevalent narrative tone but also most of the trappings that had dominated fantasy from The Castle of Otranto and The Monk through the nineteenth century to Weird Tales". Unknown quickly separated itself from Weird Tales, whose fantasies still primarily aimed to produce fear or shock. The closest predecessor to Unknown was Thorne Smith, whose prohibition-era "Topper" stories also mixed fantasy with humor. Before Unknown, fantasy had received little serious attention, though on occasion writers such as James Branch Cabell had achieved respectability. In Ashley's opinion, Unknown created the modern genre of fantasy, though commercial success for the genre had to wait until the 1970s.
Clareson also suggests that Unknown influenced the science fiction that appeared in Astounding after Unknown folded. According to this view, stories such as Clifford Simak's City series would not have appeared without the destruction of genre boundaries that Campbell oversaw. Clareson further proposes that Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, two of the most important and successful science fiction and fantasy magazines, were direct descendants of Unknown.
Unknown is widely regarded as the finest fantasy magazine ever published: Ashley says, for example, that "Unknown published without doubt the greatest collection of fantasy stories produced in one magazine." Despite its lack of commercial success, Unknown is the most lamented of all science fiction and fantasy magazines; Lester del Rey describes it as having gained "a devotion from its readers that no other magazine can match". Edwards comments that Unknown "appeared during Campbell's peak years as an editor; its reputation may stand as high as it does partly because it died while still at its best". | [
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We are now releasing the topics for model development for TREC-AToMiC. These topics are an addition on top of the validation set of AToMiC and aim to be closer to what you should expect for the task. The main difference is that they have a pooled set of annotations, leading to a richer annotation compared to the validation set. However, in order to achieve this richer annotation, there are way less queries (only 13) that have been selected to showcase different attributes of retrievers.
We note that the topics do not represent exactly what will be the final task (we will aim for topics that are more important to wikipedia), but more in a way that they were: a) Easy to annotate and b) Could show some important factor, such as topics from the AToMiC training set, but that the linked image is very different from others that may be found in the original AToMiC corpus. The 13 topics are divided into 4 areas:
TV/Cinema
We choose the five following topics: Goldfinger (Cast and Plot), Space Jam (Cast), Friends (Premise), How I met your Mother (Premise)
Here we want to see if the model can find simple information (e.g. photos of cast members that we now have photos on wikimedia), but also look into something more complicated (plot points for GoldFinger). There's also the idea of checking if the retriever will look into the Section as it is the goal of AToMiC and not pages (thus Cast and Plot should have very different results for Goldfinger).
Soccer
Three topics: Andrea Barzagli (Return to the national team: Euro 2012, 2013 Confederations Cup and 2014 World Cup), Manchester United (2013->Present and Ferguson years (1986–2013)).
Again, we want to make sure that models are looking more at the section level (including years that things happened) than the passage level. All topics here were selected knowing that images for those topics exist in other languages
Transportation
Again three topics: Emirates Airline (fleet), Flixbus (Europe) and List_of_Cadillac_vehicles
We chose those topics because they are easy for MultiModal models (Salient Points on images/ Require OCR), but are not always easy for text-only models (e.g. Some flixbus images describe only the bus model, but not the fact that it belongs to Flixbus).
Geography/History
Finally we also take two completely different topics: NIST () and Mutawakkilite_Kingdom_of_Yemen (introduction). The goal here was to pick something that not only was different from the ones before, but that also contain images that are not that present in traditional multimodal evaluation (e.g. Country maps, Schematics).
Baseline results
In order to annotate the queries we ran 5 baselines (4 Multi-Modal and 1 textual only) and created 3 ensembles (all multi-modal, best multi-modal + text, all 5 baselines). Everything is ran in the TREC task scenario ("AToMiC large"). We took the top-10 of each of the 8 runs and annotated it, leading to 533 annotations (average of 41 unique results per query). We run several metrics and present the results below:
The first thing we notice is that the models are able to perform better than expected on this set of topics. Indeed, if we compare the RR@10 of ViT-G on the validation of AToMiC (0.074) with the one we obtained it is clear that the sparse annotations do not suffise for this task (we talk in more detail below looking at each topic individually). More-so, the gap between textual only models (such as SPLADE) and Multi-Modal is greatly reduced, especially on precision based metrics. Finally, we are able to see improvements using an ensemble of multi-modal and text-only models.
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