omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Turing Tumble. Turing Tumble is a game and demonstration of logic gates via mechanical computing.

Description
Named after Alan Turing, the game could, in the abstract, duplicate the processes of any computer whatsoever if the game field itself were sufficiently large.  This follows because the game is P-complete by the circuit value problem and PSPACE-complete if an exponential number of marbles is allowed. The device has implications for nanotechnology.

The game is advertised as Turing complete: an extension of the game that allows an infinitely large board and infinitely many pieces has been shown to be Turing complete via simulations of both Rule 110 for cellular automata, as well as of Turing machines.

Although it resembles a pachinko machine in its aesthetic use of gravity-fed metal balls, it is primarily a teaching device in the fundamentals of logic-computer programming, and as such is an example of gamification. The framing device in the included comic book features an astronaut who must solve 60 increasingly difficult logic problems which illustrate the fundamentals of computer programming.

History
The impetus of the puzzles included with the device was the frustration of the programmer and chemistry professor Paul Boswell (along with his wife, Alyssa Boswell, a DIY maker), then at the University of Minnesota, at the lack of computing prowess of other scientists which was necessary for their own projects. Boswell was already well known for programming complex games for Texas Instruments computers. The inventors were also inspired by the Digi-Comp II, a precursor from the late 1960s.

Components 
A Turing Tumble machine has the following parts:
 Ball drops – The standard version uses two ramps which store a given number of balls. A switch at the bottom of the board triggers the release of the initial ball (typically blue), from the top left of the panel. The second ramp, on the right, contains red balls.
 Ramps and crossovers – The green ramp allows the balls to run down it one way and release it in only that direction, whereas the orange crossover lets balls traverse it to either side both ways, i.e. from right to left and vice versa. 
 Interceptors – This black piece stops a ball. 
 Bits – This is a one-bit storage: it changes direction when a ball rolls through, such that the next ball goes to the other side.
 Gear and gear bits – Gear bits are exactly like regular bits, but they can be connected to gears. The gears allow for linking state changes, thus integrally adding extra (abstract) power.

Reception 
Critically, the device has received high praise for its concept and execution, albeit with some caveats (the recommended age being 8+).

The computing game has won the Parents' Choice Gold Award, and won in the category "Best Toys of the Year 2018" under the aegis of the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association.

References

External links 
 
 Turing tumble simulator (JavaScript)

Mechanical computers
Educational toys
Computer-related introductions in 2017
SS Charles D. Walcott. SS Charles D. Walcott was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after Charles D. Walcott, an American geologist, paleontologist, and government administrator. Walcott served as the Director of the US Geological Survey from 1894-1907, and as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907-1921.

Construction 
Charles D. Walcott was laid down on 29 September 1944, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 2327, by J.A. Jones Construction, Panama City, Florida; sponsored by Miss Eva Pearl Parker, a yard employee in the fabrication shop, and launched on 7 November 1944.

History
She was allocated to American Export Lines Inc., 13 November 1944. On 30 December 1947, she was placed in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

She was sold for scrapping, 31 January 1961, to Commercial Metals Co., for $46,588.18. She was withdrawn from the fleet, 26 July 1961.

References

Bibliography 

 
 
 
 

Liberty ships
Ships built in Panama City, Florida
1944 ships
Wilmington Reserve Fleet
Yoshio Okamoto. is a Japanese chemist, who was awarded the 2019 Japan Prize for his groundbreaking work in asymmetric polymerization and its practical applications in drug discovery.

Okamoto was the first to prove that synthetic polymer conformations could be controllable, publishing work on asymmetric polymerization from 1979 onwards.

This led to the development by Okamoto and others of helical polymers for use in high performance liquid chromatography columns (HPLC), enabling easy separation of chiral drug molecules.

Education and career 
Okamoto received his B.S. (1964), M.S. (1966), and Ph.D. (1969) degrees from Osaka University, and served as assistant professor and associate professor at the university from 1969 to 1990. In 1990 he became a professor at Nagoya University. After retiring in 2004, he was appointed Guest Professor of EcoTopia Science Institute, Nagoya University. He was appointed as Chair Professor of Harbin Engineering University in 2007.

Awards for his work include the Award of Society of Polymer Science, Japan (1982), The Chemical Society of Japan Award for 1999, Chirality Medal (2001), Medal with Purple Ribbon (Japanese Government) (2002), Fujiwara Prize (2005), and the Japan Prize (2019).

References 

1941 births
Living people
Osaka University alumni
Academic staff of Osaka University
Academic staff of Nagoya University
Academic staff of Harbin Engineering University
Japanese expatriates in China
20th-century Japanese chemists
21st-century Japanese chemists
SS Charles H. Marshall. SS Charles H. Marshall was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after Charles H. Marshall, an American businessman, art collector and philanthropist who was prominent in society during the Gilded Age.

Construction 
Charles H. Marshall was contracted on 22 April 1943 by the United States Maritime Commission (MARCOM) with J.A. Jones Construction Company, Panama City, Florida as MARCOM Hull 2329. She was laid down on 11 October 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Clarence Graham, the wife of the assistant work manager of outfitting at JAJCC, launched on 17 November 1944 and delivered ten days later.

History
On delivery on 27 November 1944, Polarus Steamship Co., Inc., New York, were appointed managers of Charles H. Marshall by the War Shipping Administration and she was registered with Official Number 246833 and home port of New York. On 9 April 1947 she was sold to Polarus Steamship and by 1950 renamed Polarus Pioneer.

After a series of sales and name changes she was returned to the Maritime Administration (MARAD) on 23 December 1963, under an exchange program, and placed in the James River Reserve Fleet, in Lee Hall, Virginia.
She was sold for scrapping, 22 February 1972, to Eckhardt and Co., for $62,222. She was withdrawn from the fleet, 27 March 1972.

References

Bibliography 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Liberty ships
Ships built in Panama City, Florida
1944 ships
James River Reserve Fleet
Surveyor (crater). Surveyor crater is a small crater in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon.  The name of the crater was formally adopted by the IAU in 1973.

On April 20, 1967, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft landed within the crater near the east rim. Surveyor 3 was the third lander of the American uncrewed Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon.

The Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed the Lunar Module (LM) Intrepid north of Surveyor crater on November 19, 1969, and eventually walked over to Surveyor 3. During their descent, Surveyor crater was a major landmark, and is the largest crater at the landing site.  To the west of Surveyor is Head crater.  To the southwest are Bench crater and Sharp crater (now called Sharp-Apollo).  To the south is Halo crater.  A distinct crater on the northeast rim is called Block crater.

Samples
Many samples were collected in and around Surveyor crater.  Samples taken near the LM on the north rim of Surveyor crater include drive tube sample 12026, and contingency samples 12073 (regolith breccia) and 12075 (olivine basalt).  Soil Sample 12042 was collected on the southwest rim near Halo crater.  Samples 12043 (pigeonite basalt), 12044 (soil), 12051 (ilmenite basalt), and 12054 (glass-coated ilmenite basalt) were collected on the south rim. Samples 12056, 12062, 12063, 12064 (all ilmenite basalts), and 12065 (pigeonite basalt) were all likely collected in the interior of the crater near the east rim and northeast of the Surveyor 3 lander.  Samples 12045, 12046, and 12047 (all ilmenite basalts) were collected at Block crater on the north rim of Surveyor crater.

External links
 Lunar Orbiter 3 image 154 H2, used for planning the mission (landing site is left of center).
 Lunar Orbiter 1 sequence of images 157, 158, and 159, showing the Apollo 12 landing site and vicinity

References

Impact craters on the Moon
Apollo 12
Surveyor program (NASA)
Justicia Acuña. Justicia Espada Acuña Mena (January 14, 1893 – 1980) was a Chilean civil engineer. Justicia was the first woman to become a civil engineer in Chile.

Biography
Justicia Acuña Mena was born in Santiago, Chile, on January 14, 1893. She was the daughter of an engineer, José Acuña Latorre. She had eight siblings. She studied at the Liceo de Aplicación and then at the Instituto Pedagógico. In 1913, she switched her studies from mathematics to civil engineering, and entered the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile, being the only woman among all the students of that faculty. She graduated as a civil engineer in 1919, along with Jorge Alessandri.

In 1920, Acuña began working as a calculator in the Department of Roads and Works of the Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado. During the course of her career at Empresa, she left a few times to raise her seven children, but always returned before retiring in 1954.

Acuña died in Santiago in 1980.

Recognition
In July 1980, to honor Acuña's effort for the advancement of women, the Chilean College of Engineers established the "Gallery of Illustrious Engineers", where she was included.

In 1991, the Justicia Acuña Mena Award was created; it is awarded every two years to an outstanding woman engineer in the practice of her profession.

On January 14, 2021, there was a Google Doodle to celebrate her on her birthday.

See also

 Elisa Bachofen—first Argentinian woman graduated as a civil engineer in 1918.

References

1893 births
1980 deaths
20th-century Chilean engineers
20th-century women engineers
People from Santiago, Chile
University of Chile alumni
Chilean civil engineers
Barium carbide. Barium carbide (also referred to as barium ethynediide or barium acetylide) is a chemical compound in the carbide family having the chemical formula .

Preparation
Barium carbide can be synthesized as an impure compound by reducing barium carbonate powder with metallic magnesium in the presence of carbon. Barium carbide can also be made by reducing carbon dioxide with hot barium metal at 600°C. These methods are used because of their high yield, and because the carbide is used to make acetylene. It can also be prepared by heating a barium amalgam and carbon powder mixture in a hydrogen current. The pure compound is prepared by reducing barium oxide with carbon at high temperature.

Properties
Barium carbide reacts similarly to calcium carbide, but it's more fusible. When exposed to extreme heat, the barium will evaporate leaving behind crystals of graphite. It can also absorb the carbon in a solution at high temperature.

Hazards
Barium carbide can cause damage to the GI tract and irritation in the skin and eyes.

References

Barium compounds
Acetylides
Schweizer SA 2-31. The Schweizer SA 2-31 was a development of the Schweizer SA 1-30 into a two-seat aircraft.

Design and development
Schweizer developed a line of gliders starting in World War II. The 2-31 was not intended to be a motor glider, but rather a light aircraft utilizing some glider and sailplane technologies, common parts with other Schweizer designs and an affordable price as a result of using smaller powerplants. It was developed from the SA 1-30 on the assumption that there would be more  of a market for a two-seat aircraft. The fuselage was based on that of the 1-30 with strengthened 1-26B wings.

Operational history
The prototype first flew in July 1960, but the type was not put into production because it was thought that the cost of setting up a production line would be too great to compete with other two-seat aircraft available at the time.

Specifications (Schweizer SA 2-31)

References

Schweizer aircraft
Single-engined tractor aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1960
Dwight station (Nebraska). The Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad Depot in Dwight, Nebraska was built in 1887 as a railroad depot of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad.  It was later a Chicago & Northwestern Railroad (C & N W) depot.  It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

It is a one-and-a-half-story  wood-frame structure, partitioned in a normal way for country railroad stations: the south end has a combination baggage-freight room, a business office including an agent's work area and a passenger waiting area is in the middle, and the north end was living quarters for the depot agent.

It has not been used as a train station since 1962, when the C & N W branchline from Platte River Junction, Nebraska,
to Seward, Nebraska, was dismantled in 1962.

References

External links

Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Nebraska
National Register of Historic Places in Butler County, Nebraska
Railway stations in the United States opened in 1887
Former railway stations in Nebraska
Dwight
Railway stations in the United States closed in 1962
Luo Qingming. Luo Qingming (; born January 1966) is a Chinese scientist currently serving as president of Hainan University since September 2018.

Education
Luo was born in Qichun County, Hubei in January 1966. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Xidian University in 1986. He received his Master of Science in optics degree and Doctor of Engineering in physical electronics and optoelectronics degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1986 and 1993, respectively. From 1995 to 1997 he did post-doctoral research at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Career
After graduating from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, he taught there. In February 1997 he founded the Biomedical Photonics Research Center. In 1999 he became vice-chairman of its College of Life Science and Technology, rising to chairman in 2004. He served as chairman of College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering between July 2007 and June 2012. In August 2007 he was promoted to become vice-president of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, he remained at the position until September 2018, when he was transferred to Haikou, capital of south China's Hainan province, as president of Hainan University.

Honors and awards
 2007 Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers
 2010 State Natural Science Award (Second Class)  
 2012 Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
 Fellow of The Optical Society
 November 22, 2019 Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

References

1966 births
People from Qichun County
Living people
Xidian University alumni
Huazhong University of Science and Technology alumni
Academic staff of Hainan University
Presidents of Hainan University
Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
Fellows of Optica (society)
Magdalena Bałazińska. Magdalena Bałazińska is a computer scientist whose research concerns databases and data streams. Born in Poland and educated in Algeria, Canada, and the US, she works at the University of Washington, where she directs the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Education and career
Balazinska was born in Poland. Her family moved to Algeria, where she studied in a Polish and French speaking school, and then to Quebec, Canada, where she did her university studies in computer engineering at the Polytechnique Montréal. She completed her Ph.D. in computer science in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation, Fault-Tolerance and Load Management in a Distributed Stream Processing System, was supervised by Hari Balakrishnan.

She joined the University of Washington faculty in 2006, and served the university as Director of the eScience Institute and Associate Vice Provost for Data Science before, in 2019, being appointed as director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Recognition
Balazinska's work on fault-tolerant distributed stream processing and on reengineering software clones has won awards for its long-term impact.
She was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2019 "for contributions to scalable distributed data systems".

References

External links
Home page

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
Polish women computer scientists
Polish computer scientists
Université de Montréal alumni
University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering faculty
2019 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
MIT School of Engineering alumni
21st-century American women scientists
21st-century American scientists
American women academics
Polish emigrants to the United States
John Ridge (British Army officer). Brigadier John Henry Ridge CBE is a British civil servant and former senior British Army officer.

Military career
Ridge was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1995. He served as commanding officer of 26 Engineer Regiment in which role he was deployed to Afghanistan. He went on to become commander of 8 Engineer Brigade in October 2015 and in that role led the British response to Hurricane Irma, an extremely powerful Cape Verde hurricane that caused widespread destruction across its path, in September 2017. He went on to become Chief, Joint Force Operations at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood in September 2017. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 New Year Honours.

He was to be promoted to major general and appointed General Officer Commanding of Army Recruiting and Initial Training Command in April 2020. However, he retired from the British Army on 25 April 2020, and joined the Civil Service. , he is Director of Defence Innovation at the Ministry of Defence.

References

Living people
Royal Engineers officers
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Year of birth missing (living people)
British Army brigadiers
MIT Disobedience Award. The MIT Disobedience Award, given by the MIT Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a $250,000 cash-prize award that recognized and honored the efforts of an individual or an organization whose ethical disobedience of authority resulted in a positive social impact. The award was active from May 2017 to September 2019, when it was cancelled after connections between the Media Lab and Jeffrey Epstein became public.

The physical award was a glass orb, fabricated by MIT Media Lab professor Neri Oxman.

The Disobedience Award was an international award, and individuals and organizations from all disciplines and specialties, including science, medicine, human rights, politics, law, journalism, and technology, were eligible for nomination.

History 
The Disobedience Award was created by former director of the MIT Media Lab Joi Ito and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in July 2016. In July 2017, the Media Lab presented the Disobedience Award to recipients Marc Edwards and Mona Hanna-Attisha to honor their efforts in exposing high levels of lead in the water supply of Flint, Michigan during the Flint Water Crisis. In 2018, the annual award was presented to the founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, and to BethAnn McLaughlin and Sherry Marts; who were recognized for activism in the #MeToo movement and the #MeTooSTEM movement, and for efforts in combating sexual harassment and misconduct in science and in academia.

In September 2019, one of the awards' jurors Anand Giridharadas resigned after news came out involving Ito's associations with Jeffrey Epstein. MIT gave orbs similar to the glass orb that was part of the prize to both Epstein and Hoffman.

Recipients

References

External links
 

American awards
Awards established in 2016
2016 establishments in Massachusetts
MIT Media Lab
Awards disestablished in 2019
2019 disestablishments in Massachusetts
Anne Tropper. Anne C. Tropper (born 1954) is a Professor of Physics at the University of Southampton. Her work considers solid-state and semiconductor lasers; specifically the development of ytterbium-doped silica fibre lasers and Vertical External-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers. She was elected a Fellow of The Optical Society in 2006, and awarded the 2021 SPIE Maiman Laser Award for her contributions to laser source science and technology.

Early life and education 
Tropper was born in London in 1954, the daughter of mathematician A. Mary Tropper and electrical engineer Hans Tropper; she spent her childhood in her father's high-voltage laboratory. She eventually studied physics at the Somerville College, Oxford, where she was taught by Nina Byers. She was encouraged by Byers to stay at Oxford for a doctoral degree, and joined the laboratory of Mike Leask. After earning her PhD Tropper was awarded a Lindemann Fellowship, and joined an engineering consultancy before moving to the Almaden Research Laboratory in San Jose, California.

Research and career 
Tropper joined the University of Southampton in 1983. She worked alongside David Hanna on the development of ytterbium-doped silica fibres, and together demonstrated their potential in λ = 1μm optical amplifiers. These amplifiers allowed for high power operation as well as the broad spectra bandwidths required to amplify ultrashort optical pulses. In 1988 Tropper and Hanna were the first to show that ytterbium-doped silica fibres could be used as an optical gain medium, and went on to investigate the spectroscopic properties that underpin its performance. Tropper's early work on  ytterbium-doped silica fibres went on to influence Gérard Mourou. In 1989 Tropper was a founding member of the University of Southampton Optoelectronics group.

In 1997 Tropper worked with Ursula Keller on the first passively mode-locked Vertical External-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VECSEL). Tropper leads the VECSEL group at the University of Southampton and coordinates the annual SPIE conference on VECSELs. She was awarded a Personal Chair in 2000 and made Head of Department in 2002. She has investigated semiconductor lasers that emit femtosecond optical pulses.

In 2006 Tropper was elected a Fellow of The Optical Society. Tropper was appointed to the Institute of Physics Council in 2017. She was one of 1,400 academics who signed a letter to The Sunday Times in support of Britain remaining in the European Union.

Tropper was awarded the 2021 SPIE Maiman Laser Award for her contributions to laser source science and technology.

Selected publications 
Her publications include:

Personal life 
Tropper is married with three children.

References 

21st-century women physicists
British women physicists
Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
Academics of the University of Southampton
Fellows of Optica (society)
Living people
1954 births