cyanic-selkie/wikianc huggingface dataset:
Xiaomi
Xiaomi released its first smartphone in August 2011 and rapidly gained market share in China to become the country's largest smartphone company in 2014. At the start of second quarter of 2018, Xiaomi was the world's fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer, leading in both the largest market, China, and the second-largest market, India. Xiaomi later developed a wider range of consumer electronics, including a smart home (IoT) product ecosystem, which has connected more than 100 million smart devices and appliances. Monthly active users (MAUs) of MIUI increased to 291.6 million in September 2019.
Xiaomi has 16,700 employees worldwide. It has expanded to other markets including Greater China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Russia, South Africa and most countries and regions in Southeast Asia and Europe. According to Forbes, Lei Jun, the founder and CEO, has an estimated net worth of US$12.5 billion. Xiaomi is the world's 4th most valuable technology start-up after receiving US$1.1 billion funding from investors, making Xiaomi's valuation more than US$46 billion. Ranked 468th, Xiaomi is the youngest company on Fortune Global 500 list for 2019. In 2019, Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments reached 125 million units, ranking fourth globally since 2018. The company has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2018.
Etymology
Xiaomi (小米) is the Chinese word for "millet". In 2011 its CEO Lei Jun suggested there are more meanings than just the "millet and rice. He linked the "Xiao" (小) part to the Buddhist concept that "a single grain of rice of a Buddhist is as great as a mountain," suggesting Xiaomi wants to work from the little things, instead of starting by striving for perfection, while "mi" (米) is an acronym for Mobile Internet and also Mission Impossible, referring to the obstacles encountered in starting the company. He also stated that he thinks the name is cute. In 2012 Lei Jun said that the name is about revolution and being able to bring innovation into a new area. Xiaomi's new 'Rifle' processor has given weight to several sources linking the latter meaning to the Communist Party of China's "millet and rifle" (小米加步枪) revolutionary idiom during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Business model
Lei Jun, Xiaomi's CEO, said that the company prices the phone almost at bill-of-material prices, without compromising the component quality and performance compared to other premium smartphones. It also profits by selling phone-related peripheral devices, smart home products, apps, online videos and themes. According to Xiaomi's Hugo Barra in 2014, the company sees hardware sales as a means of delivering software and services in the long term, "We are an Internet and a software company much more than a hardware company." However, financial data available at the time indicated that this is either wishful thinking or plans for the far future: 94% of the company's revenue came from mobile phone sales, an even higher proportion than Apple.
At first, to reduce overhead costs, Xiaomi did not own any physical stores, selling exclusively from its online store. In recent years, they have opened 54 brick and mortar stores to combat the strategies of other low-cost competitors in Chinese markets. It also did away with traditional advertising and relies on social networking services and word-of-mouth to publicize its products.
By keeping a tight control over its stock, Xiaomi is able to place cheaper batch orders as demand dictates. Limited availability flash sales ensure that supply never outstrips demand and helps promote its products. In contrast, traditional OEMs incur large upfront productions costs, which must be recouped by selling prices, in order to ship phones, some of which may not sell, out to retailers all around the world.
Xiaomi say that they listen closely to customer feedback, having them test out upcoming features themselves, and building an extensive online community. Lei Jun described it this way, "When I was with Kingsoft, I had the opportunity to work with Nokia and Motorola, two mobile phone giants of their time. One day, I pointed out to their R&D boss, some inadequacies. After that, they merely acknowledged my input but never acted upon what I had said. So I thought to myself, if I make a phone, you can tell me anything you wish for it or what's wrong. If it is justifiable, we will work on it immediately. I'll give you an update every week and you may even see your wishes come true within a week. In practice, Xiaomi's product managers spend a lot of time browsing through the company's user forums. Once a suggestion is picked up, it is quickly transferred to the engineers. Therefore, features can turn from a mere concept to shipping products within a week. The company then ships a new batch of phones out every week on Tuesday at noon Beijing time, containing the new software builds and possible minor hardware tweaks. Xiaomi calls this process "design as you build."
Sonja Aldén
Sonja Aldén, born 20 December 1977, in St Albans, England, UK) is a Swedish singer. In 2006, 2007 and 2012 she participated at Melodifestivalen. She has also worked together with Shirley Clamp and Sanna Nielsen. Also, she has written songs for other artists, like hard rock/heavy metal band The Poodles, who also participated in the Swedish Melodifestivalen 2006 with the song Night of Passion. She has attended the Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm.
Xiaomi
Business model
Xiaomi's mascot, Mitu, is a white rabbit wearing an Ushanka (known locally as a "Lei Feng hat" in China) with a red star and a red scarf around its neck.
Brands
POCO is a sub-brand owned by the Chinese electronics company Xiaomi Corporation. It was first announced in August 2018 as a mid-range smartphone line, and became a separate sub-brand of Xiaomi in 17 January 2020 with entry-level and mid-range devices, while Xiaomi itself produces upper-range and flagship Mi phones. POCO phones use the Xiaomi MIUI user interface on top of Android.
In Q4 of 2018, the POCO F1 reportedly become the best selling smartphone sold online in India, beating competition such as the OnePlus 6. The Pocophone was sometimes referred to as the "flagship killer killer" for offering high-end specifications at an affordable price. The first POCO phone was released in 2018 in India on Xiaomi's website. It instantly became a bestseller with 700,000 units sold until 6 December 2018, becoming the best selling smartphone sold online in India.
Products
Xiaomi produces many products. Observers suggest that part of Xiaomi's rapid success rests on its ability to differentiate itself within the Android universe. The company has increased its range of products; its smartphones include: Mi Series, Mi Note Series (got a new update after 3 years, with the Mi Note 10 Pro), Mi Max Series, Mi Mix Series, Redmi and POCO Series. As well as mobile phones, Xiaomi has started selling wearables, mobile accessories, and appliances such as television and speakers. In 2018 it was selling tablets, laptops, and smart-home devices.
Xiaomi operates on a vertically-integrated model that enables the company to sell hardware at cost or below in order to attract users and earn money by selling content. Hugo Barra, a former Google executive who served Xiaomi's vice president from 2014 to 2017, characterized the organization as "an Internet and a software company much more than a hardware company".
Xiaomi also keeps its prices low or close to its manufacturing costs by keeping most of its products in the market longer, eighteen months rather than the six-month norm followed by many smartphone companies. Xiaomi said they sell their phones close to cost and intends to make profit on services.
In 2019 Xiaomi started to sell simple goods such as sunglasses, caps, pillows, glass lunchboxes, cups, filters, bags, backpacks, luggage, screwdrivers, and umbrellas.
In April 2019, researchers at Check Point found a security breach in Xiaomi phone apps. The security flaw was reported to be preinstalled.
In 2019, the company announced that it would launch more than 10 5G phones in 2020, some of them being: Mi 10/10 Pro with 5G functionality included.
In March 2020, Xiaomi showcased its new 40W wireless charging solution, which was able to fully charge a smartphone with a 4,000mAh battery from flat in 40 minutes.
In December 2020, Xiaomi collaborates with award-winning photographer Steve McCurry, to promote the photographic capabilities of the Mi 10T Pro handset. The brand’s ‘My Unsung Hero’ campaign features images captured on the Mi 10T Pro.
GPL violation
Xiaomi was unfavorably covered for its non-compliance with the terms of the GNU GPL. The Android project's Linux kernel is licensed under the copyleft terms of the GPL, which requires Xiaomi to distribute the complete source code of the Android kernel and device trees for every Android device it distributes. By refusing to do so, or by unreasonably delaying these releases, Xiaomi is operating in violation of intellectual property law in China, as a WIPO state. Prominent Android developer Francisco Franco publicly criticized Xiaomi's behaviour after repeated delays in the release of kernel source code. Xiaomi in 2013 said that it would release the kernel code. The kernel source code is available on the GitHub website.
Comparisons with Apple Inc.
Xiaomi has been compared to the American corporation Apple Inc., as reviewers found some of Xiaomi's phones and tablets similar in appearance to Apple's. In addition, the marketing strategy of Xiaomi is at times described as riding on the back of the "cult of Apple". It is reported that, after reading a book about Steve Jobs in college, Xiaomi's chairman and CEO, Lei Jun, carefully cultivated a Steve Jobs image, including jeans, dark shirts, and Jobs's announcement style at Xiaomi's earlier product announcements. Given the above, he was categorized as a "counterfeit Jobs."
In 2012, the company was said to be counterfeiting Apple's philosophy and mindset. In 2013, critics debated how much of Xiaomi's products were innovative, and how much of their innovation was just really good public relations. Others point out that while there are similarities to Apple, the ability to customize the software based upon user preferences through the use of Google's Android operating system sets Xiaomi apart.
Hugo Barra
In August 2013, the company announced that it was hiring Hugo Barra from Google, where he served as vice president of product management for the Android platform. Barra has declined to comment on the timing of the Google relationships, and stated that he had been in talks with Xiaomi for over a year prior to announcing the move. He was employed as vice president of Xiaomi to expand the company outside of mainland China, making Xiaomi the first company selling smartphones to poach a senior staffer from Google's Android team. Barra's focus was to help Xiaomi grow internationally.
Barra quit his position in January 2017 to join Facebook as VP of virtual reality.
Privacy concerns and alleged data theft
Xiaomi's cloud storage service Mi Cloud stores all user data in its servers in China. As a company based in China, it is must share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law and National Intelligence Law. Xiaomi's Cloud messaging service sent some private data, including call logs and contact information, to Xiaomi servers. Xiaomi later released an MIUI update that made cloud messaging optional and that no private data was sent to Xiaomi servers if the cloud messaging service was turned off.
In October 2014, Xiaomi announced that they were setting up servers outside of China for international users, citing improved services and compliance to regulations in several nations. Around the same time, the Indian Air Force warned against Xiaomi phones, stating that they were a national threat as they sent user data to an agency of the Chinese government.
On 30 April 2020, Forbes reported that Xiaomi extensively tracks use of its browsers, including private browser activity, phone metadata, and device navigation, and more alarmingly, without secure encryption or anonymization, more invasively and to a greater extent than mainstream browsers. Xiaomi disputed the claims, while affirming that it did extensively collect browsing data, and claiming that the data was not linked to any individuals and that consumers had consented to being tracked. Xiaomi later posted a response stating that the collection of aggregated usage statistics data is used for internal analysis, and would not link any personally identifiable information to any of this data. However after a followup by the report's originator, Gabriel Cirlig, Xiaomi backed down and added an option to completely stop the information leak when using their browser in incognito mode.
Sales numbers
The Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission had investigated the flash sales and found that Xiaomi had sold fewer smartphones than advertised. In December 2014, three flash sales were investigated. In those flash sales Xiaomi claimed that the number of smartphones sold was 10,000 units each for the first two sales, and 8,000 units for the third one. However, FTC investigated the claims and found that Xiaomi sold 9,339 devices in the first flash sale, 9,492 units in the second one, and 7,389 for the third. It was found that during the first flash sale, Xiaomi had given 1,750 priority ‘F-codes’ to people who could place their orders without having to go through the flash sale, thus diminishing the stock that was publicly available. The FTC fined Xiaomi 600000 TWD.
Temporary ban and criticism in India
On 9 December 2014, the High Court of Delhi granted an ex parte injunction that banned the import and sale of Xiaomi products in India. The injunction was issued in response to a complaint filed by Ericsson in connection with the infringement of its patent licensed under FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing). The injunction was applicable until 5 February 2015, the date on which the High Court was scheduled to summon both parties for a formal hearing of the case. On 16 December, the High Court granted permission to Xiaomi to sell its devices running on a Qualcomm-based processor until 8 January 2015. Following that, Xiaomi held various sales on Flipkart, including one on 30 December 2014. Following that sale, the company received press coverage after its flagship Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G phone sold out in six seconds. A judge extended the division bench's interim order, allowing Xiaomi to continue the sale of Qualcomm chipset-based handsets until March 2018.
On 27 June 2020, CAIT - the Confederation of All India Traders - criticized Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi global vice president and managing director of Xiaomi India, for disrespecting the sentiments of Indian citizens, after he claimed a "Boycott Chinese Products" campaign was the result of mob mentality.
Security Issues in Indian and certain overseas versions of MIUI
In April 2019, Indian security researcher Arif Khan discovered a security vulnerability affecting the Indian and certain global versions of MIUI's native browser application - Mi Browser and Mint Browser, which is also developed by Xiaomi, both of which were based on the same browser engine, which was bypassed more than 2 times subsequently after Xiaomi fixed it. Khan also found a URL Address Bar Spoofing vulnerability affecting only the Indian and certain overseas versions but not the Chinese version. Again in the same month, Khan reportedly found another major lock screen bypass vulnerability affecting only the Indian version of MIUI which was using Glance, which allowed exfiltration of sensitive user data despite MIUI's lock screen protection, which was eventually fixed by Xiaomi after several media reports. These events led to various speculations about the company's motives, and approach concerning the privacy and security of its users in its Indian and overseas markets.
Caribbean philosophy
Caribbean philosophy is the study of thought by philosophers of the Caribbean. It also deals with people and situations within Caribbean societies.
Saint-Jeure-d'Andaure
Saint-Jeure-d'Andaure is a commune in the Ardèche département in southern France.
Caribbean philosophy
Subject
Caribbean philosophy often asks questions about race, slavery, freedom, emancipation, gender issues, and decolonization. Caribbean philosophy examines thought practices in other fields such as literature, music, and historical writings.
Rennell and Bellona Province
Rennell and Bellona is a province of the Solomon Islands. Its capital is Tigoa.
Caribbean philosophy
Subject
Afro-Caribbean philosophers write about the Afro-Caribbean intellectual tradition.
Rennell and Bellona Province
Rennell and Bellona is made up of two islands: Rennell Island and Bellona Island.
Ludvonga I
Ludvonga I (c. before 1670 - 1715), was a king of Swaziland. Out of all the Maswati kings, Ludvonga I was king for a very long time.
Caribbean philosophy
Subject
Caribbean philosophical texts are written in several languages such as English, and French, Spanish. For example,José Martí and Eugenio María de Hostos wrote in Spanish about Cuban and Puerto Rican independence. Caribbean women philosophers include Ofelia Schutte, Sylvia Wynter, and Giannina Braschi. They write on many different subjects including racism, sexism, economy, and oppression.
American and Latin American philosophy receive more academic attention than Caribbean philosophy. To combat that, the Caribbean Philosophical Association was founded on June 14, 2003 in Mona, Jamaica.
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Сергій Сергійович Прокоф'єв) (born Sontsovka, Ukraine 23 April 1891; died Moscow 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer and pianist who came from Ukraine. During his lifetime, Ukraine was part of Russia. Together with Dmitri Shostakovich he is one of the greatest Russian composers of the 20th century. Children all over the world love to listen to his musical story Peter and the Wolf and the music for Lieutenant Kije, but he wrote many other great works including symphonies, concertos, piano sonatas, ballets and operas.
Early life
Prokofiev was born into an educated family, and his mother recognized very early her son's musical gifts. His father was a college-educated agronomist who managed the farm-site of his employer in the Ukrainian steppe. His mother played the piano reasonably well in her son's opinion. The young Sergei started composing at a very early age. By the time he was eleven he had written two operas and a series of small piano pieces he would later call "little puppies". Soon he was writing music with unusual time signatures and in unusual changes of key.
Prokofiev's formal musical education began when, as a young boy, he started taking lessons from Reinhold Glière. In 1904 he went to study at the Conservatory in St Petersburg. He was a brilliant student, but he often disagreed with the way the professors were teaching. He was bored with the lessons in orchestration from Rimsky-Korsakov and the counterpoint lessons from Liadov although he could have learned more from these great men. His main friends were the composers Nikolai Myaskovsky and Boris Asafiev. He often showed them his latest piano compositions which sounded very modern. Many of St. Petersburg's newspaper critics did not like his music, while others felt he showed great promise and was sure to be a "futurist".
Prokofiev spent the summer of 1909 back at home in the small Russian farming village of Sontsovka in what is now Ukraine where his father was an estate manager. He worked in a way that was to be typical of him all his life: he carefully kept a diary until the middle 1930s, was an excellent chess player and writer, kept making changes to a number of his earlier works. He often borrowed music from one composition and put it in another, or used unfinished works in new compositions.
Prokofiev travelled to London where he met many famous people including Diaghilev who had a very skilled ballet group called Ballets Russes. The composer Igor Stravinsky had been writing ballet music for Diaghilev’s dancers. Prokofiev particularly loved Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and it influenced his music. He wrote an opera The Gambler based on the novel by Brusilov but the singers and the orchestra did not understand his music and refused to perform it. One of the first works of Prokofiev to become known all over the world was his First Symphony known as the Classical Symphony. He made the music sound like that of composers from the Classical period such as Haydn. This symphony is still very popular today.
America and Europe (1918-1936)
In 1917 the Russian Revolution took place. The country was in a chaotic state so Prokofiev went to the United States. After a journey which took four months via the Transsiberian railway, Tokyo and San Francisco, he arrived in New York. His first real success came from his connections with Cyrus McCormik in Chicago. His first major commission was the opera The Love for Three Oranges for the Chicago Lyric Opera. It was popular in Chicago but not in New York City where he really wanted to make his reputation. He soon traveled to Paris to see Diagalev again whom he had met earlier in London. His first ballet for him was Ala and Lolly which Diagalev did not like and would not perform. This ballet later became Prokofiev's Scythian Suite. His next ballet was more successful, The Tale of the Buffoon. He also wrote his Third Piano Concerto which is his most popular concerto for piano. Prokofiev lived off and on in Paris for fourteen years, but he often went on tour, performing his works on the piano. In 1928 his Third Symphony was first performed, much of which was based on music from his opera  The Fiery Angel which was never performed completely in his lifetime. In the late-1920s he was invited back to Russia. Although many Soviet people tried to persuade him to stay there he decided to remain in the West where he was starting to have a very successful career. It was not until 1936 that he finally decided to move back to Russia. Life was not easy in the Soviet Union for all types of creative people such as musicians, poets, writers and film makers. Composers were expected to write music which would make ordinary people happy and make them feel proud of their country and of the communist revolution. Any music that did not do this was called “decadent” or “formalist”. Many artists where punished for creating works that did not do what the socialist politicians expected of them. Prokofiev had never been interested in politics, and he thought the politicians would leave him in peace so that he could write the kind of music he liked.
USSR: (1936-1953)
Back in Russia Prokofiev settled in Moscow. He wrote several children’s pieces including Peter and the Wolf. He was asked to write music for two important jubilees: the 20th anniversary of the Revolution and the centenary of Pushkin’s death. He took great care over this music. Much of what he wrote was to be directed by Meyerhold, but Meyerhold was arrested, later tortured and murdered so the whole project never happened. Some of the music written for the Pushkin centenary was later used in his opera War and Peace, the Stone Flower ballet and Symphonic Waltzes. He also wrote a very large piece called Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, using words by Marx, Lenin and Stalin for a total of 500 performers. The music included realistic effects such as gun shots, machine-gun fire and sirens. However, many critics said that the music was vulgar, and it was not performed until 1966, long after Prokofiev’s death. He tried to make the soviet authorities pleased by writing a "safe" opera called I am the Son of the Working People but the politicians stopped it during its early auditions. The opera was going to be produced by Meyerhold, but again it never happened because Meyerhold was arrested and executed.
The World War II was a time of change for Prokofiev for several reasons. In 1941 his marriage to Lina Llubera came to an end and his new companion Mira Mendelsohn, and later wife, saw him through his last years. Lina was a foreigner and marriage to foreigners was made illegal (forbidden) at that time. In 1948 she was arrested, charged with being a spy, and sent to a labour camp. On the other hand, Mira had lived her entire life within the Soviet system and was much more aware of how to survive in the politacally-charged times. In 1945, shortly after the premier of his Fifth Symphony, he had a stroke which was the beginning of a period of bad health. He spent a lot of time away from Moscow where it was unsafe. The first signs that his health was to be poor occurred in Alma-Ata in 1943 when he had a fainting spell. He was an workaholic and this, plus the pressures placed upon him by the Soviet system, forced him to withdraw from an active social life in Moscow. Prokofiev lived with Mira for the rest of his life. Lina was freed from the labour camp after Stalin’s death. Later she left the Soviet Union and she died in London in 1989.
During the war Prokofiev composed a lot of his best music. He wrote his last piano sonatas as well as working on his operas Betrothal in a Monestary after Sherican, and War and Peace (based on the novel by Tolstoy) and writing his film music for both Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible and composing his Fifth Symphony. The first performance of this symphony, given on 13 January 1945, was the last time he conducted in public. He spent the rest of his life in a house in the country to the west of Moscow, although during his last winters he lived in Moscow close to his doctors. Even in these last years he was not to find peace. Stalin’s rule of terror had serious effects on all Soviet artists. In 1948 a committee of the Communist Party spoke out against several Soviet composers including Prokofiev. They said that his music was “formalist” and “alien” to the Soviet people. His opera “War and Peace” was not allowed to be performed because it was neither lyrical nor patriotic enough. The works he wrote in his last years were mostly ones which the politicians officially approved. His last great work of this period is the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra which used a lot of music from the unsuccessful Cello Sonata, and greatly revised with the help of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on 5 March 1953. His death was hardly mentioned in the newspapers because the dictator Josef Stalin died on the same day.
Waterparks (band)
Waterparks is an American pop rock band formed in 2011 in Houston, Texas. The members of the group are Awsten Knight (lead vocalist, rhythm guitar), Geoff Wigington (lead guitar, backing vocals) and Otto Wood (drums).
The group have released three EPs; two were released independently while the third was released under Equal Vision. They released their first full-length album, Double Dare, on November 4th, 2016 under Equal Vision, then their second, Entertainment, under the same label on January 26th, 2018. The band officially announced that they had left Equal Vision on May 23rd, 2019, and revealed that they were under Hopeless Records. Their third full-length album, Fandom, was released under Hopeless on October 11th, 2019. The group are now signed with 300 Entertainment.
Mehrdad Ardeshi
He is also the coach of the Iranian Chess national youth team, and in 2020, won the third place in the World Junior Chess Championship held online in Georgia. He is the chairman of the training committee of the Iranian Chess Federation, a member of the Iranian national team, and a participant in the World Chess Olympiad that It was the last year that Garry Kasparov was present.
Mehrdad Ardeshi is Champion of the West Asian Qualifiers, the first joint winner of the international competitions of the Fajr decade, two years champion of the Iranian Premier League with Bahman and Railway teams, 4 years individual champion of the Iranian Premier League. He is also the uncle of Iranian filmmaker Danial Hajibarat.
FRACTRAN
Fractran is a simple programming language invented by mathematician John Horton Conway. It operates on fractions and uses them as instructions for the program.
In Fractran, you start with a positive whole number as the input. The program consists of a list of fractions. You multiply the input by each fraction in the list, one after another. The result of each multiplication is rounded down to the nearest whole number, and that becomes the new input for the next iteration.
The process continues until the input can no longer be multiplied by any of the fractions in the list. At that point, the program stops, and the final output is the last number you obtained.
What makes Fractran interesting is that some programs can do really powerful things. For example, they can simulate any other computer program, given the right set of fractions. These programs are like universal computers in a simple language.
The behavior of Fractran programs is related to the prime factorization of numbers. The fractions in the program are carefully chosen to produce specific patterns or sequences. This connection to number theory makes Fractran a fascinating area of study for mathematicians and computer scientists.
Overall, Fractran is a simple language where you multiply an input by fractions repeatedly until you can't do it anymore, and the final result is your output. But within this simplicity lies the potential for powerful computation and deep mathematical connections.
Delivery (commerce)
Delivery is the process of transporting goods.
Methods
Most goods are delivered through a transportation network. Cargo (physical goods) are delivered via roads and railroads on land, shipping lanes on the sea and airline networks in the air. Some goods may be delivered via other networks, such as:
Terny-Sorny
Terny-Sorny is a commune. It is in the Picardie region in the Aisne department. This in the north of France. In 2015, 325 people lived there.
Mona Lisa (actress)
Gloria Lerma Yatco (June 22, 1922 – August 25, 2019), better known as Mona Lisa, was a Filipino movie actress. She was one of the most popular Filipino actresses of the 1940s. She resumed her movie career in the 1970s retiring for 20 years and remained in her 80s.
Tergnier
Tergnier is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
Mona Lisa (actress)
Her best known roles were Insiang, Giliw Ko, and Cain at Abel.
Alimukku
Alimukku '  is a village in Kollam district. The head office of Piravanthoor Panchayat is here.
Leg cricket
Leg cricket is a form of cricket where the players don't use a bat. It is played with the batters instead kicking the ball with their legs, and there is a distance of only about 80 to 120 ft from the kicker to the edge of the field. The ball is delivered to the kicker underarm by the bowler.
Mona Lisa (actress)
Lisa died on August 25, 2019 at her home in Manila from Alzheimer's disease-related problems at the age of 97.
Leg cricket
Measurements
The pitch is 8 feet wide and 42 ft to 48 ft long, (based on the age group and category of the players).
Heavy Vehicles Factory
The Heavy Vehicles Factory is located in Avadi locality, Chennai metropolitan city. It was set up in the year 1961. It was set up by Ordanance Factories Board, Government of India. The function of this factory is to manufacture battlefield equipment. These include Vijayantas, T-79 Tanks. At present it manufactures India's main battle tank Arjun and T-90 tanks.
Interval (mathematics)
In mathematics, an interval is a group of numbers that includes all numbers between the beginning and the end. Numbers that are larger than the beginning number and smaller than the end number are inside the interval, and numbers that are smaller than the beginning number or larger than the end number are not in the interval. The beginning number and end number may or may not be inside the interval. An example of an interval might be from 3.3 to 15. Here, numbers such as 4, 8, 9.5, 14, and even 14.999 are inside this interval. Numbers such as -4, 2, 3.2, 20, and 15.000001 are not inside this interval.
MIDI
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard. It describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors. It connect a large variety of electronic musical instruments, digital devices for playing, editing, and recording music.
Thenelles
Thenelles is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
Interval (mathematics)
To write an interval, write either a square bracket ( [ ) or a parenthesis ( ( ), the beginning number, a comma ( , ), the end number, and either a closing square bracket ( ] ) or a closing parenthesis ( ) ). Examples of intervals are (4, 9.6), [-100, 100], [-30, -4).
MIDI
A MIDI recording is not an audio signal. It is more like a piano roll, identifying the pitch, start and stop time and other properties of each individual note.
Interval (mathematics)
Different kinds of intervals
Intervals can be separated by how they act at their ends. Intervals can be closed, open, or mixed.
Closed Intervals
An interval that is closed also includes the beginning and the end, and generally takes the form of [a,b]. A closed interval that has 3 as the beginning and 5.4 as the end would include 3, 5.4, and every number between 3 and 5.4. To write a closed interval, use square brackets ( [ and ] ). An example of an closed interval is [136, 450].
Mixed Intervals
A mixed interval is open at one end and closed at the other end, and generally takes the form of [a,b) (right-open interval) or (a,b] (left-open interval). This means that the interval may include the beginning but not the end, or it may include the end but not the beginning. For example, the interval [9, 23) would include 9, but it would not include 23.
Thenailles
Thenailles is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
Synthesizer
A musical synthesizer is an instrument that uses electricity to make musical sounds. They are the main instrument for making electronic music. Many synthesizers have a keyboard like that of a piano. When playing a piano keyboard, sounds are made by hitting soft hammers against strings pulled very tight. When playing a synthesizer keyboard, sounds are made by turning electrical oscillators on and off. Since "synthesizer" is such a big word, the word is usually shortened to "synth".
Lee Zeldin
Lee Michael Zeldin (born January 30, 1980) is an American attorney, politician, and officer in the United States Army Reserve. He is a Republican. He represented New York's 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2023. From 2011 to 2014, Zeldin served as a member of the New York State Senate from the 3rd Senate district.
Synthesizer
How synthesizers work
An oscillator is something that "vibrates", or repeats the same pattern. The pendulum of a clock, for example, is a very slow oscillator. A piano string "oscillates" when struck by a hammer.
Lee Zeldin
In 2022, he unsuccessfully ran for Governor of New York against the incumbent Kathy Hochul. He was seen as a possible candidate for Chair of the Republican National Committee in 2023, however decided against running.
Synthesizer
How synthesizers work
Electric oscillators might be made using transistors. They turn electricity into electrical patterns, or signals, that repeat over and over. When different keys are pressed, different notes are heard. This is done by making the signal from the oscillator repeat at different rates.
The signal can be boosted in strength and sent straight to a loudspeaker. But the sound of a simple signal can be boring after a while. Sounds can be made more interesting in many ways.
By combining many of these methods, synths can now sound very much like older instruments. For one example, special synths called "drum synths" are used just to make the sounds a drummer might make. Synths can also make many new sounds never heard before.
In the early 2000s, computers got fast enough so "software synths" could be made. These are computer programs designed to look and work like a synth. They tend to be less expensive, so more can be used. Most of these programs can be downloaded for free, however this may be illegal.
There are special tools available to play synths. For example, a thing called a "wind controller" lets players of wind instruments use their special skills. But there is still a need for more ways to control synths to make them more expressive.
Our Lady of China
Our Lady of China is a title for the Virgin Mary in China who is believed to have appear at the small village of Donglu in 1900. In Chinese she is called Zhōnghuá Shèngmǔ. She is also known as Our Lady of Donglu.
History
During the Boxer Rebellion, about 10,000 soldiers attacked the small village of Donglu on April, 1900. The soldiers tried to kill the approximately 1,000 Christians. As the soldiers were attacking, the Virgin Mary appeared wearing a white robe in the sky. When the soldiers saw the apparition, they fired gunshots at the Virgin Mary. Despite the efforts to shoot down the apparition, the Virgin Mary continued to shine brightly. As the soldiers kept firing, another apparition appeared: a majestic angel, whom witnesses believed to be the Archangel Michael. The angel flew down surrounded by blazing flames of fire down from the sky and into the crowd of soldiers. By himself, Michael drove all of the soldiers out of the village. Villagers learned afterwards that their local priest, Father Wu, prayed to the Virgin Mary for help from the soldiers attacking. The residents of Donglu then built a church for the Virgin Mary to express their gratitude for the help they received. The Church was then destroyed during World War II after it was hit by Japanese bombs.
Rubik's Revenge
A Rubik's Revenge is a 4x4 Rubik's Cube. It has 24 centers, 24 edges, and 8 corners. It was made by Peter Sebestény. Unlike the Rubik's Cube, the centers can move to different places.
Ways to solve
There are different ways to solve a Rubik's Revenge. One way is to solve the centers, and then the edges. Then, you can solve it like a 3x3. But, special problems can happen. 2 edges flipped wrong, or 2 sets of edges could be swapped from each other.
These problems are called parity errors. It can still be solved, but special moves must be done to solve it. Another way is to solve the edges first, then the centers. But, it is also possible to get parity errors. There are ways to solve a Rubik's Revenge without getting parity errors. One way is to solve the corners and edges first, then the centers.
Thiernu
Thiernu is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
Callirhytis seminator
Callirhytis seminator, the wool sower gall wasp, is a gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. It is named after the puffy, white gall it makes on trees.
The adult wasps are about 1/8" in long. They are dark brown in color. The larvae (grubs) are white and fat and have no legs.
Laccadive Sea
The Laccadive Sea or Lakshadweep Sea is a body of water bordering India (including its Lakshadweep islands), the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. It is located to the southwest of Karnataka, to the west of Kerala and to the south of Tamil Nadu. This warm sea has a stable water temperature through the year and is rich in marine life, the Gulf of Mannar alone hosting about 3,600 species. Mangaluru, Kannur, Kozhikode, Ponnani, Kochi, Alappuzha, Kollam, Thiruvananthapuram, Tuticorin, Colombo, and Malé are the major cities on the shore of the Laccadive Sea. Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of peninsular India, also borders this sea.
Callirhytis seminator
The wasps only lay eggs on white oak trees and only in the spring. They lay the egg in a gall, a round, white structure. It later changes color. The larvae live and grow inside the gall. People who open up the galls to look at them see things that look like seeds. They are not seeds. They are hard plant material. They protect the larvae.
Gall wasps have a two-generation system. This means that one set of parents makes children that look different from themselves. Then those children make children that look like the parents. That means grandparents and grandchildren look like each other, but parents and children do not. Among gall wasps, one generation makes stem galls, and second makes leaf galls. Scientists do not know what the alternate wool sower wasp gall looks like.
The wasps do not sting humans. They do not hurt the white oak trees.
Humbucker
A humbucking pickup (also known as humbucker, or double coil) is a type of guitar pickup. They uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups.
Humbuckers are one of the two main types of guitar pickup, the other being single coil.
In any magnetic pickup, a vibrating guitar string, magnetized by a fixed magnet within the pickup, induces an alternating voltage across its coil.
David Hedison
Albert David Hedison Jr. (May 20, 1927 – July 18, 2019) was an American actor.
In 1959, he starred as Victor Sebastian in the short-lived espionage television series Five Fingers. He was known for his role as Captain Lee Crane in Irwin Allen's television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and as CIA agent Felix Leiter in two James Bond movies, Live and Let Die and Licence to Kill.
Hedison had two daughters, Serena and Alexandra Hedison. Alexandra is married to actress Jodie Foster.
Hedison died on July 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 92.
Koji Yoshimura
Koji Yoshimura (born 13 April 1976) is a former Japanese football player.
Club career statistics
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Electoral district of Davidson
Davidson is an electoral district of New South Wales. It was created in 1971.
It is a conservative electorate that has only ever been represented by the Liberal Party, with the exception of one independent.
Davidson is located in northern Sydney.
Torcy-en-Valois
Torcy-en-Valois is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
David Kaye
David V. Hope (born October 14, 1964), better known by his stage name David Kaye, is a Canadian-American voice actor, best known for his roles in animation.
Control of fire by early humans
When humans first learned how to control fire, it was an important step in their culture. It allowed them to cook food and get warmth and protection. Making fire also allowed activity into the dark, and gave some protection from predators and insects.
The cooking of food was probably the most useful effect of fire. There are foods like nuts and fruits which do not need cooking, but others, such as root vegetables, mostly need cooking.
It is not known for sure when fire was first controlled by humans. Evidence for the use of fire by Homo erectus by about 400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support. Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago (mya).
East Africa
The earliest evidence of humans using fire comes from many archaeological sites in East Africa, like Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya. The evidence at Chesowanja is the discovery of red clay shards that scientists estimate are 1.42 million years old. Scientists reheated some of the shards at the site, and found that the clay must have been heated to 400 °C to harden.
At Koobi Fora, there are archaeological sites with evidence of control of fire by Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago, with the reddening of sediment that can only come from heating at 200—400 °C. There is a hearth-like depression at a site in Olorgesailie, Kenya. Some very tiny charcoal was found, but it could have come from a natural brush fire.
In Gadeb, Ethiopia, fragments of welded tuff that seemed to have been burned were found in Locality 8E, but re-firing of the rocks may have happened because of volcanoes erupting nearby. These have been found among Herculean artifacts made by H. erectus.
In the Middle Awash River Valley, cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could be made by temperatures of 200 °C. These features are thought to be burned tree stumps such that they would have fire away from their habitation site. There are also burnt stones in the "Awash Valley", but volcanic welded tuff is also in the area.
Southern Africa
The earliest certain evidence of human control of fire was found at Swartkrans, South Africa. Many burnt bones were found among Acheulean tools, bone tools, and bones with cut marks that were made by hominids. This site also shows some of the earliest evidence of H. erectus eating meat. The Cave of Hearths in South Africa has burned deposits dated from 0.2 to 0.7 mya, as do many other places such as Montagu Cave (0.058 to 0.2 mya and at the Klasies River Mouth (0.12 to 0.13 mya.
Fire was used to heat silcrete stones to increase their works before they were knapped into tools by Stillbay culture. This clue shows this not only with Stillbay sites that date back to 72,000 BP but sites that could be as old as 164,000 BP.
Changes to behavior
An important change in the behavior of humans happened because of their control of fire and the light that came from the fire. Activity was no longer restricted to the daylight hours. Some mammals and biting insects avoid fire and smoke. Fire also led to better nutrition through cooked proteins.
Richard Wrangham of Harvard University argues that cooking of plant foods may have caused the brain to get bigger, because it made complex carbohydrates in starchy foods easier to digest. This allowed humans to absorb more calories from their food.
Changes to diet
Stahl thought that because some parts of plants, like raw cellulose and starch are hard to digest in uncooked form, they would likely not be a part of the hominid diet before fire could be controlled. These parts include stems, mature leaves, enlarged roots, and tubers. Instead, the diet was made up of the parts of the plants that were made of simpler sugars and carbohydrates such as seeds, flowers, and fleshy fruits. Another problem was that some seeds and carbohydrate sources are poisonous. Cyanogenic glycosides, which are in linseed, cassava, and manioc, amongst others, are made non-poisonous through cooking. The teeth of H. erectus and the wear on the teeth reflect the consumption of foods such as tough meats and crisp root vegetables.
Toulis-et-Attencourt
Toulis-et-Attencourt is a commune. It is found in the region Picardie in the Aisne department in the north of France.
Vibes (movie)
Vibes is a 1988 American romantic adventure comedy movie directed by Ken Kwapis and starring Cyndi Lauper, Jeff Goldblum, Julian Sands, Peter Falk, Elizabeth Peña, Steve Buscemi, Van Dyke Parks, Park Overall, Max Perlich. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures and was not a box office success.