Hyperons are particles that are made of quarks. What makes them different from other baryons (particles made of three quarks) is that they must have at least one strange quark, but no charm quarks or bottom quarks. Strange quarks have a property known as strangeness. Strangeness causes the strange quark–and all other particles bonded with it–to not decay by strong force, but instead due to the much slower weak force. Since all quarks are fermions (which means that no two of them can be in the same point in space at the same point in time), each quark has a spin of 1/2, adding up to a total spin of 3/2 for a hyperon. This quickly decays into a 1/2 spin particle.
Hyperons themselves decay due to weak force. There are dozens of different hyperon combinations. For example, a Λ (lambda) hyperon has a charge of 0, and is often written as Λ. When it decays, it usually creates one proton, and one antipion. Like many forms of weak force decay, there is more than one possible outcome. A Λ also has a significantly lower, but still possible, chance to decay into a neutron and an uncharged pion. Λ hyperons have an average lifespan of 2.6x10 seconds, which makes it one of the longest living hyperons.
Scientists still study hyperons in labs across the world, such as CERN, Fermilab, and SLAC. Hyperons provide answers questions for problems such as , in which symmetries that were believed to be true may not be true.
Dither
Dithering is the intentional use of noise (random sounds) to reduce the error of compression.
Example below:
Donner Party
The Donner Party were a group of at least 87 American settlers who tried to cross the Sierra Nevada into California in the winter of 1846–47. Most historians count 87 members of the party. Stephen McCurdy in the "Western Journal of Medicine" includes three others, bringing the number to 90. Forty-Two of them died from starvation, disease and the cold weather. The rest reached California the following year. They became famous in the history of the American West.
The party left Springfield, Illinois in April 1846. They were led by two brothers, Jacob and George Donner. The settlers followed the California Trail to Fort Bridger in Wyoming. From there, they left the trail to take a different route that was not used much. It was reportedly a shorter way to California. This route was called the Hastings' Cutoff. There was much hardship and suffering on this route. They wasted 18 precious days. Instead of being shorter, it took them much longer to get across Nevada.
On October 28, heavy snows trapped the settlers in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The group made shelters, but ran out of food. Some of them resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.
On December 16, seventeen people tried to go west again. Of these, two went back to the camp. Of the fifteen who kept going, seven stayed alive and reached a settlement on the western side of the mountains after 32 days. After this, a rescue party went back, and in about two weeks made it to one of the camps set up in the mountains. After this, three more groups tried to rescue those trapped in the mountains. The last person was rescued on April 7,1847. In all, 45 people from the original Donner Party died, and there were 36 who survived. All the survivors made it to California, but they disagreed about what happened during the winter and whose fault it was.
Today, there are several memorials to the group, including a monument and the Donner Memorial State Park. A lake was also named after them.
Body of Evidence
Body of Evidence is a 1993 American erotic thriller movie starring Julianne Moore, Madonna and Willem Dafoe. The movie was written by Brad Mirman, directed Uri Edel and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. It was given an "NC-17" rating because it showed female nudity, sex scenes, and vulgar language. The movie performed very poorly at the box office and was rejected by critics; the New York Times described it as a "sluggish courtroom melodrama." The 99 minute long movie was released by MGM.
Rebecca Carlson (Madonna) is on trial in Oregon for murder. The district attorney Robert Garret (Joe Mantegna) is sure she used her body as a weapon, causing her victim to die from a heart attack while having sex. She will inherit eight million dollars from the victim. She hires a good lawyer, Frank Dulaney (Willem Dafoe) to defend her in court.
Invasion of Kuwait
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a military campaign to occupy Kuwait in the Persian Gulf. Started by Saddam Hussein in 1990 who accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil through slant drilling. In August 2, 1990 Iraq launched 88,000 troops backed up by 750 tanks into Kuwait. Two days after the invasion Kuwait was fully occupied and surrendered. Saddam Hussein made a temporary annexation of Kuwait as the 19th province of Iraq. It was not recognized by the United Nations or other countries.
After the occupation, Iraq took over many of the Kuwaiti oil fields and started taking the oil to keep for Iraq. Factories, businesses and industries were also taken over by Iraqis as well.
After seven months of occupation, the United Nations launched a US led coalition to enter Kuwait to free it from Iraq.
Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah
Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah (born 16 June 1929 in Kuwait City – 15 January 2006) was an Emir of Kuwait, also known as the Last Emir in and before the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.
Leuconostoc
Leuconostoc is a gram-positive bacteria, emerging human pathogen found in environment and food products. Risk factors of infection include antibiotic pressure, foreign device, or underlying immune defects. Commercial diagnostics are commonly used to identify gram-positive bacteria, with errors mostly at the species level.
Pediococcus
Pediococcus is a genus of gram-positive lactic acid bacteria. They usually occur in pairs or tetrads, and divide along two planes of symmetry, as do the other lactic acid cocci genera. They are purely homofermentative.
"Pediococcus" strains are found in foods, on plants, and as beer-spoilage agents. They produce inactive lactic acid and are used mainly for making fermented vegetables, mashes, beer, and wort.
Portishead (band)
Portishead (, with the stress on "head)" are an English musical group from Bristol. The band is named after the nearby town of the same name, west of Bristol. Portishead is Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, and Adrian Utley, while sometimes using a fourth member Dave McDonald; an engineer on "Dummy".
Charles R. Knight
Charles Robert Knight (October 21, 1874 – April 15, 1953) was an American artist famous for his paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
His works were reproduced in many books, and are on display at several major museums in the United States.
As a child, Knight was deeply interested in nature and animals, and spent many hours copying the illustrations from his father’s natural history books. Though legally blind, he was partially sighted. He had severe astigmatism, and a later injury to his right eye, but had specially-designed glasses. At twelve, he enrolled at the Metropolitan Art School to become a commercial artist.
In his free time, Knight visited the American Museum of Natural History, and attracted the attention of Dr. Jacob Wortman. Soon the museum commissioned Knight to produce a series of watercolors for their fossil halls.
These paintings were hugely popular among visitors, and Knight continued to work with the museum well into the 1930s. He painted what would become some of the most celebrated images of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and prehistoric humans.
One of Knight's best-known pieces for the American Museum of Natural History is 1897’s "Leaping Laelaps", one of the few pre-1960s images to present dinosaurs as active, fast-moving creatures. This was long before the theories of modern paleontologists like Robert Bakker.