Transonic means going from subsonic to supersonic. Subsonic ends and supersonic begins at mach 1, so transonic goes from mach 0.8 to 1.2. When you are going through transonic speeds, drag increases and it is really hard to go any faster. This is the sound barrier.
Massively multiplayer online game
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are video games where players play together over the internet. These games are different from other online video games because they have very many players all playing with each other at the same time. Other online video games have fewer players playing with each other at the same time. The most popular kind of MMOG is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Examples are "RuneScape", "World of Warcraft" (WOW) and "Roblox".
Baton
A baton is a stick. Different batons are used by different people, for different things.
Policemen often carry batons, which can be used as weapons. These batons are also sometimes called "nightsticks."
Runners pass batons to one another in relay races.
Musical conductors use batons to lead an orchestra.
Various people in a parade or marching band might twirl batons for people to see.
Mark D. Maughmer
Mark D. Maughmer (born January 18, 1947) is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He is famous for designing the first type of airplane wing tips for better glider performance. He has won many awards for being a good teacher and for having an influence in aerospace.
Triskaidekaphobia
Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number thirteen. The number 13 has been linked to bad luck in the western superstition. Buildings in the United States does not have the "13th floor".
The term was first used by Isador Coriat in "Abnormal Psychology".
There is also a fear of Friday the 13th. This fear is called "paraskevidekatriaphobia" or "friggatriskaidekaphobia".
13 is not unlucky. People have no reason to fear it.
Magnoliales
Magnoliales is an order of flowering plants.
The Magloliales includes six families:
Magnoliaceae
The Magnoliaceae, or Magnolia Family, is a flowering plant family in the order Magnoliales. The family has about 225 species in 7 genera.
Bobsleigh
Bobsled or bobsleigh is a team sport played during the Winter Olympic Games. It is played by riding on iced tracks with a sled. Modern tracks are made of concrete, coated with ice. Artificial bobsleigh tracks are also available.
International bobsled competitions are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT).
The first bobsleds were built in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the late 19th century by rich tourists from Britain who were staying at the Palace Hotel owned by Caspar Badrutt.
Pulp (band)
Pulp are an English band from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The lead singer, Jarvis Cocker, started the band in 1978. For a long time, Cocker found life as a musician hard. However, in 1994, he and his band became famous when their album called his ""His and Hers"" became popular in the United Kingdom. They had three more albums and a number of singles before the band split up in 2001.
1983 - It
1987 - Freaks
1992 - Separations
1994 - His 'N' Hers (Number 9 in the UK music charts)
1995 - Different Class (Number 1 in the UK music charts)
1996 - Countdown 1992-1983 (Number 10 in the UK music charts)
1998 - This Is Hardcore (Number 1 in the UK music charts)
2001 - We Love Life (Number 6 in the UK music charts)
+44 (band)
The +44, or Plus 44, was a punk rock group that formed in 2004. It was started by former Blink-182 members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker, with guitarist Craig Fairbaugh from the band Transplants, and Shane Gallagher from the Nervous Return. The name of the band is the title of the telephone code for the UK, +44. The band broke up on 13 January 2009, when Blink-182 reformed.
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. Johns Hopkins opened in 1876 as part of a seven million dollar donation to start a number of institutions under his name. Johns Hopkins does more than 1.5 billion dollars of science research every year. During the pandemic, the university has been doing researching on the outbreak.
Trap door
A trap door or trapdoor is a door in the ground or in a floor, that one enters vertically. Some can open when someone is standing on it.
Trap doors are popular in mystery themed movies. The victim who falls down the trap door often is met with danger or a hidden treasure. A standard cliché deals with the victim finding himself in an alligator filled swamp (most famously seen in "Scooby Doo" cartoons).
Pane sciocco
Pane sciocco (also called in Tuscany "pane toscano" ) is a variety of bread very common in Tuscany and in Umbria, two regions in Italy. Pane sciocco does not contain salt, because when it was first made in the 1600s, salt was very rare and very expensive. Pane sciocco is often eaten with typically Tuscan ham or sausages, famous for being salty.
Lobotomy
Lobotomy, also known as leucotomy, is a type of brain surgery. It was created in 1935 by António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses". The operation cut the connections from the pre-frontal cortex (front part of the frontal lobes) to the rest of the brain. At first it seemed a great success, but the operation is now rarely done.
He used the method for certain types of mental illness for which there was no other treatment. He first used it on patients with obsessive behaviour, which they repeated time and again. It was also used to treat other mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and clinical depression.
The problem with lobotomies was that they forever changed a person's personality and behaviour. Sometimes, the results were beneficial: patients which had been violent became calm. But long-term studies, which were not done by Moniz, show some had severely damaged personalities. They often had very little 'drive' and motivation.
Today, antipsychotic drugs, like chlorpromazine, may treat the symptoms of such disorders. Lobotomies are not common today.
One question is why was such a dramatic surgical technique so widely accepted. It is generally agreed that psychiatrists wanted to find some way of helping thousands of patients in psychiatric hospitals in the twentieth century. Also, those same patients had little power to resist the increasingly radical and even reckless interventions of asylum doctors.
According to the "Psychiatric Dictionary" in 1970:
Good results are obtained in about 40 percent of cases, fair results in some 35 percent and poor results in 25 percent. The mortality rate probably does not exceed 3 percent. Greatest improvement is seen in patients whose premorbid personalities were 'normal', cyclothymic, or obsessive compulsive; in patients with superior intelligence and good education; in psychoses with sudden onset and a clinical picture of affective symptoms of depression or anxiety, and with behaviouristic changes such as refusal of food, overactivity, and delusional ideas of a paranoid nature.
According to the same source, prefrontal lobotomy reduces:
anxiety feelings and introspective activities; and feelings of inadequacy and self-consciousness are thereby lessened. Lobotomy reduces the emotional tension associated with hallucinations and does away with the catatonic state. Because nearly all psychosurgical procedures have undesirable side effects, they are ordinarily resorted to only after all other methods have failed. The less disorganized the personality of the patient, the more obvious are post-operative side effects. ...