omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Million service units. A million service units (MSU) is a measurement of the amount of processing work a computer can perform in one hour. The term is most commonly associated with IBM mainframes. It reflects how IBM rates the machine in terms of charging capacity. The technical measure of processing power on IBM mainframes, however, are Service Units per second (or SU/sec).

One “service unit” originally related to an actual hardware performance measurement (a specific model's instruction performance). However, that relationship disappeared many years ago as hardware and software evolved. MSUs are now like other common (but physically imprecise) measurements, such as “cans of coffee” or “tubes of toothpaste.” (Cans and tubes can vary in physical size depending on brand, market, and other factors. Some coffee cans contain 500 grams and others 13 ounces, for example.)

Most mainframe software vendors use a licensing and pricing model in which the customers are charged per MSU consumed (i.e. the number of operations the software has performed) in addition to hardware and software installation costs. Others charge by total MSU system capacity. Thus, while MSU is an artificial construction, it does have a direct financial implication. In fact, software charges are why the MSU measurement exists at all.

IBM publishes MSU ratings for every mainframe server model, including the zSeries and System z9 ranges. For example, a zSeries z890 Model 110 is a 4 MSU system. MSU ratings are always rounded to whole numbers. IBM enforces an MSU rule called the “technology dividend”: each new mainframe model has a 10% lower MSU rating for the same level of system capacity. For example, when IBM introduced the System z9-109 in 2005, if a particular z9 configuration could process the same number of transactions per second as its predecessor (a particular z990 configuration) then it would do so with 10% fewer MSUs. The lower MSU rating means lower software costs, providing an incentive for customers to upgrade.

However, as software costs are not linear with MSUs, decreasing or increasing MSUs will not show a proportional change in software costs.  The "least expensive" MSUs will be added (with increased MSUs) or removed (with decreased MSUs).  For example, a 10% increase in MSUs will result in a software cost increase of less than 10%. How much more (or less, if reducing MSUs) depends on numerous other factors.

Sample usage 

 “Our accounting department will need 6.5 MSUs on a System z9-109 from 10 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. each night in order make sure our quarterly financial statements arrive on time.”
 “You will need 8 more Db2 MSUs for your z900 to handle this year’s Christmas sales rush. Since your current z900 configuration doesn’t have enough capacity to add 8 Db2 MSUs, you need to add another engine. It might be less expensive to upgrade to a z9 because of the double technology dividend.”

See also 
 Instructions per second
 z/OS
 z/VSE

External links 
 Sample MSU Figures for various hardware configurations (IBM Website)

References 

Computer performance
Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) (English: Association of German Engineers) is an organization of about 135,000 engineers and natural scientists. More than 12,000 honorary experts process the latest technical findings each year to promote the technology location. Established in 1856, it is the largest engineering association in Western Europe.
Its role in Germany is comparable to that of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in the United States or Engineers Australia (EA) in Australia, but includes broader field work. It is not a union, but promotes the advancement of technology and represents the interests of engineers and engineering businesses in Germany.

History
The organization was founded on May 12, 1856 by fellow researchers from the Academic Fraternity Hütte, in the small town of Alexisbad, with the first journal officially being released to the public in 1857. In 1866 the VDI helped establish the predecessor of Technischer Überwachungsverein, the Dampfkesselüberwachungsvereinen (English: Steam boiler inspection association). At the time, engineering was not regarded to be of the same ranking as scientific disciplines, which the VDI changed in 1899, with the re-categorisation of the Technische Hochschule as a type of University. In 1923 the VDI Verlag was founded, publishing monthly newspapers which are distributed to members. After the Second World War the VDI moved its headquarters from Berlin to Düsseldorf, where it remains now today. It also helped establish the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kerntechnik (English: Society for Nuclear Technology) in 1956, which resulted in the German Atomforum, in 1959. In recent times, the VDI worked in conjunction with EXPO 2000 Hannover GmbH to establish the first worldwide engineering day.

Structure
Throughout its history, the VDI has been served by many presidents, including:
 Carl von Linde (1904–1905)
 Oskar von Miller (1912–1914)
 Fritz Todt (1939–1942)
 Hans Bluhm (1947–1952)
 Hans Schuberth (1953–1956)
 Gerhard Wilhelm Becker (1978–1982)
 Karl Eugen Becker (1983–1988)
 Joachim Pöppel (1989–1991)
 Klaus Czeguhn (1992–1994)
 Hans-Jürgen Warnecke (1995–1997)
 Hubertus Christ (1998–2003)
 Eike Lehmann (2004–2007)
 Bruno O. Braun (2007-2012)
 Udo Ungeheuer (2013–2018)
 Volker Kefer (2019–2022)
 Lutz Eckstein (since 2023)

Notable Members

 Blake R. Van Leer, United States Army officer and president of Georgia Institute of Technology
 Carl von Linde

Membership
In 2013 the VDI had over 150,000 registered members worldwide, which also included scientists and I.T professionals. Members have opportunities to ask for help regarding job prospects and opportunities, receive news about the engineering profession, especially in Germany, as well as other services such as specialized insurance. 
Members are also able to attach the suffix VDI upon becoming a member, and is classified as a legitimate name suffix.

References

External links
 

Engineering societies based in Germany
H. E. T. Haultain. Herbert Edward Terrick Haultain (9 August 1869 – 19 September 1961) was a Canadian engineer and inventor.

He was born in Brighton, England, and died in Toronto, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in civil engineering from the School of Practical Science (now the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering) in 1889. He was largely responsible for the creation of the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer administered to many Canadian engineering students, where they receive the Iron Ring. The Haultain building at the University of Toronto is named for him and he is an inductee of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

In the 1920s, 20% to 30% of the Canadian graduating classes in engineering were emigrating to the United States.  In 1927 Professor Haultain and Robert A. Bryce, president of Macassa Mines and a noted mining engineer, co-founded the Technical Service Council, a non-profit, industry-sponsored organization.  Its aim was to retain engineers for Canada by operating a placement service for them.  In 1971, the Council's executive search arm, Bryce, Haultain & Associates, was named after them. He died in 1961 and was buried in Little Lake Cemetery in Peterborough, Ontario.

External links 
 
 Note about Haultain  Canadian Mining Hall of Fame
 
Archival papers of Herbert Edward Terrick Haultain and the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer are held at the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services

1869 births
1961 deaths
Canadian civil engineers
University of Toronto alumni
Canadian mining businesspeople
Canadian inventors
People from Brighton
British emigrants to Canada
Implicit invocation. Implicit invocation is a term used by some authors for a style of software architecture in which a system is structured around event handling, using a form of callback. It is closely related to inversion of control and what is known informally as the Hollywood principle.

Implicit invocation is the core technique behind the observer pattern.

See also
 Spring Framework
 Qt Framework

References

External links
 An Introduction to Software Architecture by David Garlan and Mary Shaw
 An Introduction to Implicit Invocation Architectures by Benjamin Edwards

Software architecture
VSI. VSI may stand for:
Vertical shaft impactor, a type of impact crusher
Vertical speed indicator, an instrument in an aircraft monitoring rate of descent or climb
Very Short Introductions, a series of books published by Oxford University Press
 Virtual Switching Instance, in VPLS
 Voluntary Service International, the Irish branch of Service Civil International
 VMS Software Inc. A vendor/supporter of OpenVMS related software.
VSI Group, British dubbing and translation company
VSI Berlin GmbH, German subsidiary
VSI Translation & Subtitling BV, Dutch subsidiary
Vendor's Single Interest insurance, a type of insurance that only protects the lien holder, as opposed to dual coverage insurance
Voltage Source Inverter, DC to AC converter
NACA cowling. The NACA cowling is a type of aerodynamic fairing used to streamline radial engines installed on airplanes. It was developed by Fred Weick of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1927. It was a major advancement in aerodynamic drag reduction, and paid for its development and installation costs many times over due to the gains in fuel efficiency that it enabled. It won the 1929 Collier Trophy.

History and design
The NACA cowling enhanced speed through drag reduction while improving engine cooling. 

The cowling consists of a symmetric, circular airfoil that is wrapped around the engine. In a normal planar airfoil, like a wing, the difference in airspeeds, and their associated changes in pressure, on the top and bottom surfaces, enhances lift. In the case of the NACA cowl, the ring-shaped airfoil is positioned so this lift effect is forward. This thrust does not fully counter the drag of the cowl but greatly mitigates it.

The difference in airspeed on the two sides is due not only to the shape of the airfoil, but also the presence of the cylinders on the inside surface, which serves to further slow the airflow. Nevertheless, the total airflow through the cowl is generally greater than it would be with no cowl as the air is sucked through the cowl by the air flowing around it. This has the side-effect of keeping the fast moving air primarily on the cylinder heads where it is most needed, as opposed to flowing between the cylinders and crankcase where it does little for cooling. Furthermore, turbulence after the air passes the free-standing cylinders is greatly reduced. The sum of all these effects reduces drag by as much as 60%. The test conclusions resulted in almost every radial-engined aircraft being equipped with this cowling, starting in 1932.

The test aircraft, a Curtiss AT-5A Hawk biplane, featuring a Wright Whirlwind J-5 radial engine, reached an airspeed of  equipped with the NACA cowling compared to  without it.

The idea that the NACA cowling produced thrust through the Meredith effect is fallacious—although in theory the expansion of the air as it was heated by the engine could create some thrust by exiting at high speed, in practice this required a cowling designed and shaped to achieve the high-speed exit of air required (which the NACA cowling was not), and in any case, at 1930s airspeeds, the effect was negligible.

See also
NACA airfoil
NACA duct
Townend ring

References

Other source
Aeronautic exhibit in Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

External links

 Abstract of NACA TN 301 report and .pdf file
 Archive of NACA reports 1917-1958

Aircraft aerodynamics
Aircraft components
Cowling
Descloizite. Descloizite is a rare mineral species consisting of basic lead and zinc vanadate, , crystallizing in the orthorhombic crystal system and isomorphous with olivenite.  Appreciable gallium and germanium may also be incorporated into the crystal structure.

The color is deep cherry-red to brown or black, and the crystals are transparent or translucent with a greasy lustre; the streak is orange-yellow to brown; specific gravity 5.9 to 6.2; hardness 31/2. A variety known as cuprodescloizite is dull green in color; it contains a considerable amount of copper replacing zinc and some arsenic replacing vanadium. There is also an arsenate analogue called arsendescloizite.

Discovery and occurrence

It was discovered in the Sierra de Córdoba deposit in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1854 and named in honor of the French mineralogist Alfred Des Cloizeaux (1817–1897). It occurs as small prismatic or pyramidal crystals, usually forming drusy crusts and stalactitic aggregates; also as fibrous encrusting masses with a mammillary surface.

Descloizite occurs in oxidised portions of veins of lead ores in association with pyromorphite, vanadinite, wulfenite, mottramite, mimetite and cerussite.

The Otavi ("O-tarvi") Mountainland of northern Namibia was once considered home to the greatest vanadium deposits in the world, including those at Berg Aukas ("OW-cuss"), Abenab ("UB-en-ub"), Baltika ("BUL-tika") and Uitsab ("ATE-sub"). Descloizite and mottramite were the main ore minerals in each of these deposits, which are now exhausted. Other localities are the Sierra de Cordoba in Argentina; Lake Valley in Sierra County, New Mexico; Arizona; Phoenixville in Pennsylvania and Obir, Carinthia Austria.

See also
 List of minerals

References

Vanadate minerals
Zinc minerals
Lead minerals
Descloizite group
Orthorhombic minerals
Minerals in space group 62
Minerals described in 1854
NACA duct. A NACA duct, also sometimes called a NACA scoop or NACA inlet, is a common form of low-drag air inlet design, originally developed by the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA, in 1945.

Design
Prior submerged inlet experiments showed poor pressure recovery due to the slow-moving boundary layer entering the inlet. The NACA design is believed to work because the combination of the gentle ramp angle and the curvature profile of the walls creates counter-rotating vortices which deflect the boundary layer away from the inlet and draws in the faster moving air, while avoiding the form drag and flow separation that can occur with protruding scoop designs.

Aircraft applications

When properly implemented, a NACA duct allows air to flow into an internal duct, often for cooling purposes, with a minimal disturbance to the flow. The design was originally called a submerged inlet, since it consists of a shallow ramp with curved walls recessed into the exposed surface of a streamlined body, such as an aircraft. 

This type of flush inlet generally cannot achieve the greater ram pressures and flow volumes of an external design, and so is rarely used for the jet engine intake application for which it was originally designed, such as the North American YF-93 and Short SB.4 Sherpa. It is commonly used for piston engine and ventilation intakes.

Automobile applications

It is especially favored in racing car design. Sports cars featuring prominent NACA ducts include the Ferrari F40, the Lamborghini Countach, the 1996–2002 Dodge Viper, the 1971–1973 Ford Mustang, the 1973 Pontiac GTO, the 1979 Porsche 924 Turbo, the Maserati Biturbo, the Nissan S130, and the Porsche 911 GT2.  It is also prevalent in some motorcycle designs, such as the 1994–1997 Honda VFR750F or the 1994-1998 Ducati 916.

See also
 NACA airfoil
 NACA cowling

References

Further reading

 
 

Aircraft aerodynamics
Engine technology
Duct
Flail (tool). A flail is an agricultural tool used for threshing, the process of separating grains from their husks.

It is usually made from two or more large sticks attached by a short chain; one stick is held and swung, causing the other (the swipple) to strike a pile of grain, loosening the husks. The precise dimensions and shape of flails were determined by generations of farmers to suit the particular grain they were harvesting. For example, flails used by farmers in Quebec to process wheat were generally made from two pieces of wood, the handle being about  long by  in diameter, and the second stick being about  long by about  in diameter, with a slight taper towards the end. Flails for other grains, such as rice or spelt, would have had different dimensions.

Flails have generally fallen into disuse in many nations because of the availability of technologies such as combine harvesters that require much less manual labour. But in many places, such as Minnesota, wild rice can only be harvested legally using manual means, specifically through the use of a canoe and a flail that is made of smooth, round wood no more than 30 inches long.

 

Non-agricultural uses 

As with most agricultural tools, flails were often used as weapons by farmers lacking better weapons. The flail is proposed as one of the origins of the two-piece baton known in the Okinawan kobudō weapon system as the nunchaku. One of the first recorded use of a flail as a weapon was at the siege of Damietta in 1218 during the Fifth Crusade, as depicted in the chronicle by Matthew Paris, though there are several references that predate this; tradition has it the man was the Frisian Hayo of Wolvega who bashed the standard bearer of the Muslim defenders with it and captured the flag.  Flails were also used as weapons by farmers under the leadership of Jan Žižka during the 15th-century Hussite Wars in Bohemia.

In ancient Egypt what has popularly been interpreted as a flail was a symbol associated with the pharaoh, said to symbolize the monarch's ability to provide for the people, though it is currently still not known exactly what the "flail" implement seen in artwork actually was.

See also
 Gohei
 Ōnusa
 Ricing stick

References

External links 

 Antique Farm Tools
 Agriculture in Victorian Times
 Picture of one kind of rice flail

Egyptian artefact types
Threshing tools
Mechanical hand tools
Wands
SAP (file format). SAP is a file format that stores music data from Atari 8-bit computers, all of which use the POKEY sound chip. Most popular tunes were written between 1981-1987.

The format is similar to the SID, SPC or NSF formats, in that it is a music data format which is supported by a player, which emulates the central processing unit and sound hardware of the original hardware in order to play music.

SAP files can be played by a SAP player or plugin, currently available for a wide variety of platforms. For instance, on the Macintosh platform, VLC version 2 and above, both on PowerPC and Intel architectures, can play SAP files. In addition, tools exist to convert SAP files to other formats.

References

External links
SAP Format Specification
ASMA — Atari SAP Music Archive A collection of players and music
ASAP — Another Slight Atari Player SAP player (POKEY and 6502 emulation core + plugins for various music players)

Atari 8-bit computers
Audio storage
Video game music file formats
24-bit computing. Notable 24-bit machines include the CDC 924 – a 24-bit version of the CDC 1604, CDC lower 3000 series, SDS 930 and SDS 940, the ICT 1900 series, the Elliott 4100 series, and the Datacraft minicomputers/Harris H series.

The term SWORD is sometimes used to describe a 24-bit data type with the S prefix referring to sesqui.

The range of unsigned integers that can be represented in 24 bits is 0 to 16,777,215 ( in hexadecimal).  The range of signed integers that can be represented in 24 bits is −8,388,608 to 8,388,607.

Usage 
The IBM System/360, announced in 1964, was a popular computer system with 24-bit addressing and 32-bit general registers and arithmetic.  The early 1980s saw the first popular personal computers, including the IBM PC/AT with an Intel 80286 processor using 24-bit addressing and 16-bit general registers and arithmetic, and the Apple Macintosh 128K with a Motorola 68000 processor featuring 24-bit addressing and 32-bit registers.

The eZ80 is a microprocessor and microcontroller family, with 24-bit registers and therefore 24-bit linear addressing, that is binary compatible with the 8/16-bit Z80. 

The 65816 is a microprocessor and microcontroller family with 16-bit registers and 24-bit bank switched addressing. It is binary compatible with the 8-bit 6502.

Several fixed-point digital signal processors have a 24-bit data bus, selected as the basic word length because it gave the system a reasonable precision for the processing audio (sound). In particular, the Motorola 56000 series has three parallel 24-bit data buses, one connected to each memory space: program memory, data memory X, and data memory Y.

Engineering Research Associates (later merged into UNIVAC) designed a series of 24-bit drum memory machines including the Atlas, its commercial version the UNIVAC 1101, the ATHENA computer, the UNIVAC 1824 guidance computer, etc. Those designers selected a 24-bit word length because the Earth is roughly 40 million feet in diameter, and an intercontinental ballistic missile guidance computer needs to do the Earth-centered inertial navigation calculations to an accuracy of a few feet.

OpenCL has a built-in intrinsic for multiplication (mul24()) with two 24-bit integers, returning a 32-bit result. It is typically much faster than a 32-bit multiplication.

See also 
 Catena, a term used for a 24-bit unit of data on the Bull Gamma 60 computer

References 

Data unit
Perkin Medal. The Perkin Medal is an award given annually by the Society of Chemical Industry (American Section) to a scientist residing in America for an "innovation in applied chemistry resulting in outstanding commercial development." It is considered the highest honor given in the US chemical industry.

The Perkin Medal was first awarded in 1906 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of mauveine, the world's first synthetic aniline dye, by Sir William Henry Perkin, an English chemist. The award was given to Sir William on the occasion of his visit to the United States in the year before he died. It was next given in 1908 and has been given every year since then.

Recipients

See also

 List of chemistry awards

References

Awards established in 1906
Chemistry awards
1906 establishments in the United States
Materials science awards