omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Pulsed energy projectile. Pulsed energy projectile or PEP is a technology of non-lethal weaponry. The U.S. military is developing PEP using an invisible laser pulse which ablates the target's surface and creates a small amount of exploding plasma. This produces a pressure wave that stuns the target and electromagnetic radiation that affects nerve cells causing a painful sensation. The technology can be used as a lethal weapon.

The pulsed energy projectile is intended for riot control and is said to work over distances of up to 2 km. It weighs about 230 kg and can be mounted on vehicles. 

The US system was developed by Mission Research Corporation (now owned by Orbital ATK). It uses a chemical deuterium fluoride laser device producing infrared laser pulses. The plasma (produced by the early part of the pulse) explodes because its electrons absorb the energy of the later part of the pulse.

In 2003, a US military review reported that the electromagnetic radiation produced by PEPs cause pain and temporary paralysis in animal experiments.

The United States Special Operations Command FY 2010 plans included starting development on a Counter UAV Pulsed Energy Projectile.

Controversy 
PEP became controversial when it appeared that a team under Brian Cooper was assigned to work on the pain factor. It was discovered that PEP could with some tweaking induce cold burn feelings and other forms of painful sensations. The controversy and the fear of public opinion to see it turned into a torture tool that wouldn't leave any physical evidence on the victim ended the official program. Cooper kept on studying effects of laser-generated plasma pulse on pain receptors and published a paper in 2008 titled "Frequency Dependent Interaction of Ultrashort E-Fields with Nociceptor Membranes and Proteins".

See also
List of laser articles

References

Sources 
 globalsecurity.org - Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP)
 New Scientist - Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon, 2 March 2005
 Andrew Buncombe. Pentagon attacked for `Pulse' gun that inflicts long-distance pain. The Independent, 5 March 2005
 Military contract for PEP pain study, from thememoryhole.org
 John B. Alexander. Non-Lethal Weapons to Gain Relevancy in Future Conflicts. National Defense. March 2002
 Presentation on PIKL, by Harry Moore, 29 August 2000

Non-lethal weapons
Energy weapons
Alliant Techsystems
Videoplace. In the mid-1970s, Myron Krueger established an artificial reality laboratory called the Videoplace.  His idea with the Videoplace was the creation of an artificial reality that surrounded the users, and responded to their movements and actions, without being encumbered by the use of goggles or gloves.  The work done in the lab would form the basis of his much cited 1983 book Artificial Reality.  The Videoplace (or VIDEOPLACE as Krueger would have it), was the culmination of several iterations of artificial reality systems: GLOWFLOW, METAPLAY, and PSYCHIC SPACE; each offering improvements over the previous installation until VIDEOPLACE was a full blown artificial reality lab at the University of Connecticut.

The Videoplace used projectors, video cameras, special purpose hardware, and onscreen silhouettes of the users to place the users within an interactive environment.  Users in separate rooms in the lab were able to interact with one another through this technology.  The movements of the users recorded on video were analyzed and transferred to the silhouette representations of the users in the Artificial Reality environment.  By the users being able to visually see the results of their actions on screen, through the use of the crude but effective colored silhouettes, the users had a sense of presence while interacting with onscreen objects and other users even though there was no direct tactile feedback available. Because the GUI elements were presented to the user independent of context, they were considered an example of a perpetual user interface. The sense of presence was enough that users pulled away when their silhouettes intersected with those of other users. (Kalawsky 1993; Rheingold 1992).  The Videoplace is now on permanent display at the State Museum of Natural History located at the University of Connecticut.   (Sturman and Zeltzer 1994).

References 

 Kalawsky, R. S. (1993). The science of virtual reality and virtual environments : a technical, scientific and engineering reference on virtual environments, Addison-Wesley, Wokingham, England ; Reading, Mass
 Rheingold, H. (1992). Virtual reality, Simon & Schuster, New York, N.Y.
 Sturman, D. J., and Zeltzer, D. (1994). “A Survey of Glove-based Input.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 14(1), 30
 Fails, Jerry Alan and Olsen, Dan R. (2003). "Interactive Machine Learning." ACM Proceedings of the 8th  international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, pp. 39 - 45

External links 
 Article in Ars Electronica Archive
 Media Art Net article

Multimodal interaction
National Institute for Nanotechnology. The National Research Council of Canada Nanotechnology Research Centre (formerly National Institute for Nanotechnology) is a research institution located on the University of Alberta main campus, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  Its primary purpose is nanoscience research.

The institute was established in 2001 as a partnership between the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Alberta, and the Government of Alberta.  It is administered as an institute of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), and governed by a board of trustees nominated by the partners. Its core funding comes from the Government of Canada and additional funding and research support comes from the university, Government of Alberta, and various federal and provincial funding agencies.

In June 2006, the institute moved into its present  facility, designed to be one of the world's largest buildings for nanotechnological research. There are at most two or three other facilities worldwide matching the new building in scale and capacity.

In 2017, the institute became the Nanotechnology Research Centre, following a recognition of the institute as its own research centre. Although on the premises of the University of Alberta, the research centre is a branch of the National Research Council of Canada.

Research areas
The Nanotechnology Research Centre plans to focus on the following areas of research:

NanoBiology

 Antimicrobials
Drug delivery
Gene delivery
Immunity
Biomaterials
Scaffolds

NanoElectronics

 Electrochem
Microfluidics
Nano & Micro Fabrication
Optical NEMS
Photonics
Quantum

Next-generation Microscopy

 Advanced characterization
 Instrument development
 Integration & optimization
 Microscopy-enabled manufacturing

Achievements
A new approach to nanosensors, revolutionizing the concept, was published in Science magazine in 2018.

The sharpest man-made object, a tungsten needle created by Mohamed Rezeq, was created at NINT in 2006.

See also
Natural scientific research in Canada
Technological and industrial history of Canada
Canadian government scientific research organizations
Canadian university scientific research organizations
Canadian industrial research and development organizations

References

External links
Nanotechnology Research Centre, Government of Canada
University of Alberta Planning and Infrastructure: NINT

2001 establishments in Alberta
Laboratories in Canada
Nanotechnology institutions
National Research Council (Canada)
Research institutes in Canada
Scientific organizations based in Canada
University of Alberta buildings
Willem Vos. Willem Lambertus Vos (born August 30, 1964, Amstelveen) is a Dutch scientist. He is  Professor of Physics at the University of Twente and former group leader at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics "AMOLF"  In 2004, with his group members, Peter Lodahl et al. they succeeded in controlling the pace of light emission, varying from a light drizzle to a rainstorm. In the process, the team has verified a 1987 prediction of American physicist Eli Yablonovitch that ignited a worldwide rush to build tiny "chips" that control light beams. The achievement of Dr. Lodahl and a team of physicists and chemists was reported on in Nature (430). Researchers say it has many potential uses, not only as a tool for controlling quantum optical systems, but also in efficient miniature lasers for display devices and telecommunications, in solar cells, and even in future quantum computers.

External links
Homepage of Willem Vos
Professor biography

1964 births
Living people
21st-century Dutch physicists
People from Amstelveen
Academic staff of the University of Twente
XML for Analysis. XML for Analysis (XMLA) is an industry standard for data access in analytical systems, such as online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining. XMLA is based on other industry standards such as XML, SOAP and HTTP. XMLA is maintained by XMLA Council with Microsoft, Hyperion and SAS Institute being the XMLA Council founder members.

History
The XMLA specification was first proposed by Microsoft as a successor for OLE DB for OLAP in April 2000. By January 2001 it was joined by Hyperion endorsing XMLA. The 1.0 version of the standard was released in April 2001, and in September 2001 the XMLA Council was formed. In April 2002 SAS joined Microsoft and Hyperion as founding member of XMLA Council. With time, more than 25 companies joined with their support for the standard.

API
XMLA consists of only two SOAP methods: execute and discover. It was designed in such a way to preserve simplicity.

Execute
Execute method has two parameters:

 Command - command to be executed. It can be MDX, DMX or SQL.
 Properties - XML list of command properties such as Timeout, Catalog name, etc.

The result of Execute command could be Multidimensional Dataset or Tabular Rowset.

Discover
Discover method was designed to model all the discovery methods possible in OLEDB including various schema rowset, properties, keywords, etc. Discover method allows users to specify both what needs to be discovered and the possible restrictions or properties.
The result of Discover method is a rowset.

Query language
XMLA specifies MDXML as the query language. In the XMLA 1.1 version, the only construct in MDXML is an MDX statement enclosed in the <Statement> tag.

Example
Below is an example of XMLA Execute request with MDX query in command.

<soap:Envelope>
 <soap:Body>
  <Execute xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-analysis">
   <Command>
    <Statement>SELECT Measures.MEMBERS ON COLUMNS FROM Sales</Statement>
   </Command>
   <Properties>
    <PropertyList>
     <DataSourceInfo/>
     <Catalog>FoodMart</Catalog>
     <Format>Multidimensional</Format>
     <AxisFormat>TupleFormat</AxisFormat>
    </PropertyList>
   </Properties>
  </Execute>
 </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Session management
XMLA has a notion of session state. It is maintained through predefined SOAP headers

 BeginSession - to begin a new session
 EndSession - to end existing session
 UseSession - to use existing session. SessionId attribute previously returned for BeginSession should be used.

References

External links
 XMLA resources and links

XML-based standards
Online analytical processing
Application programming interfaces
Intelligent electronic device. In the electric power industry, an intelligent electronic device (IED) is an integrated microprocessor-based controller of power system equipment, such as circuit breakers, transformers and capacitor banks.

Description
IEDs receive data from sensors and power equipment and can issue control commands, such as tripping circuit breakers if they sense voltage, current, or frequency anomalies, or raise/lower tap positions in order to maintain the desired voltage level. Common types of IEDs include protective relaying devices, tap changer controllers, circuit breaker controllers, capacitor bank switches, recloser controllers, voltage regulators etc. This is generally controlled by a setting file. The testing of setting files is typically one of the most time-consuming roles of a protection tester.

Digital protective relays are primarily IEDs, using a microprocessor to perform several protective, control and similar functions.  A typical IED can contain around 5–12 protection functions, 5–8 control functions controlling separate devices, an autoreclose function, self monitoring function, communication functions etc.

Some recent IEDs are designed to support the IEC61850 standard for substation automation, which provides interoperability and advanced communications capabilities.

IEDs are used as a more modern alternative to, or a complement of, setup with traditional remote terminal units (RTUs). Unlike the RTUs, IEDs are integrated with the devices they control and offer a standardized set of measuring and control points that is easier to configure and require less wiring. Most IEDs have a communication port and built-in support for standard communication protocols (DNP3, IEC104 or IEC61850), so they can communicate directly with the SCADA system or a substation programmable logic controller. Alternatively, they can be connected to a substation RTU that acts as a gateway towards the SCADA server.

See also
 Power system automation

References

Electric power
Baltimore and Ohio SD20-2. The SD20-2 was a type of diesel-electric locomotive created in 1979/1980 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by rebuilding EMD SD35 locomotives.  Five of the B&O's SD35 fleet were rebuilt at their Cumberland Yard by fitting a non-turbocharged EMD 645 engine and upgraded electrical systems.  They were placed in service at the B&O Queensgate Yard in Cincinnati, Ohio attached to slugs, engineless units with traction motors that draw their power from the "mother" unit.  

With the B&O, the SD20-2s were numbered #7700–7704. At some point, #7700 and #7702 swapped numbers.  All of them passed to CSX Transportation as #2400-2404, but are now withdrawn from CSX service.  One of the units, #2401, went on to the Ohio Central Railroad System; #2401 was in turn resold to the Pacific Harbor Line and reassigned road #45 (pictured at right).  #2404 was scrapped by Cycle Systems of Roanoke, Virginia in August 2006.

See also
 List of GM-EMD locomotives

References

External links
 The History of EMD Diesel Engines at the Pacific Southwest Railway official website.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
C-C locomotives
Standard gauge locomotives of the United States
Railway locomotives introduced in 1979
Sculptured thin film. Sculptured thin films (STFs) are nanostructured materials  with unidirectionally varying properties that can be designed and realized in a controllable manner using variants of physical vapor deposition. The ability to virtually instantaneously change the growth direction of their columnar morphology,  through simple variations in  the direction of the incident vapor flux, leads to a wide spectrum of columnar forms.

Forms
These forms can be:
 two-dimensional, ranging from the simple slanted columns and chevrons to the more complex C- and S-shaped morphologies
 three-dimensional, including simple helixes and superhelixes
 combinations of two- and three-dimensional forms.

Properties
The column diameter and the column separation normal to the thickness direction of any STF are nominally constant. The column diameter can range from  about 10 to 300 nm, while the density may lie between its theoretical maximum value to less than 20% thereof. The crystallinity must be at a scale smaller than the column diameter. The chemical composition is essentially unlimited,  ranging from insulators to semiconductors to metals.  Most recently, polymeric STFs have been deposited by combining physical and chemical vapor deposition processes; and deposition on micropatterned substrates has also been carried out.

Uses
To date, the chief applications of STFs are in optics as polarization filters, Bragg filters, and spectral hole filters. At visible and infrared wavelengths, a single-section STF is a unidirectionally nonhomogeneous continuum with direction-dependent properties. Several sections can be grown consecutively into a multisection STF, which can be conceived of as an optical circuit that can be integrated with electronic circuitry on a chip. Being porous, an STF can act as a sensor of fluids and can be impregnated with liquid crystals for switching applications too. Applications as low-permittivity barrier layers in electronic chips  as well as solar cells have also been suggested. Biomedical applications such as tissue scaffolds, drug-delivery platforms, virus traps, and labs-on-a-chip are also in different stages of development.

References

 

Nanomaterials
Amaurote. Amaurote is a British video game for 8-bit computer systems that was released in 1987 by Mastertronic on their Mastertronic Added Dimension label. The music for the game was written by David Whittaker.

Plot
From the game's instructions:

The city of Amaurote has been invaded by huge, aggressive insects who have built colonies in each of the city's 25 sectors. As the only uninjured army officer left after the invasion (that'll teach you for hiding!) the job falls to you to destroy all the insect colonies.

Gameplay

The player controls an "Arachnus 4", an armoured fighting-machine that moves on four legs. The player must first select a sector to play in via a map screen and then control the Arachnus as it wanders an isometric (top-down in the Commodore 64 version) view of the cityscape attacking marauding insects and searching for the insect queen using a scanner. The Arachnus attacks by launching bouncing bombs. It can only launch one at a time so if a bomb misses its intended target the player will have to wait until it hits the scenery or bounces against the fence of the play area before firing again. Once the queen has been located, the player can radio-in a "supa-bomb" which can be used to destroy the queen. The player can also radio-in other supplies such as additional bombs and even ask to be pulled out of the combat zone. Extra weaponry costs the player "dosh", the in-game currency.

Reception

The game was favourably reviewed by Crash magazine who said it was graphically impressive, well designed and fun to play.  It was given a 92% overall rating. Zzap!64 were less impressed by the Commodore 64 version which was criticised for dull gameplay and programming bugs. It was rated 39% overall.

References

External links

1987 video games
Action games
Amstrad CPC games
Atari 8-bit computer games
Binary Design games
Commodore 64 games
Fictional populated places
Mastertronic games
MSX games
Single-player video games
Video games about insects
Video games about robots
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
Video games scored by David Whittaker
Video games with isometric graphics
ZX Spectrum games
Birmingham European Airways. Birmingham European Airways was originally established in 1983 (as Birmingham Executive Airways). The airline as its name implies was based at Birmingham Airport (BHX/EGBB) in the UK and operated services geared towards business travellers. The airline began operations on 6 June 1983 with three Jetstream 31 aircraft, flying services from Birmingham to Copenhagen, Zurich and Milan. A Saab 340 was introduced in February 1985, but it suffered severe reliability problems in the airline's service, and was retired at the end of the year. To replace the Saab, Birmingham Executive chose the Gulfstream I, operating a wet-leased aircraft from September 1986, with the airline receiving the first of its own Gulfstreams, fitted out as 24-seat airliners in February 1987. Birmingham European Airways later introduced a number of BAC 1-11 aircraft into its fleet.

The airline's route network included points such as Amsterdam, Milan, Oslo, Stuttgart, Newcastle, Belfast and Cork.

In October 1992, Birmingham European merged with Brymon Airways to form Brymon European Airways.

In January 2006 there was news of a new "Birmingham European Airways" being established, once again using Jetstream aircraft to serve European destinations from Birmingham and with the stated aim of starting operations during 2006.

See also
 List of defunct airlines of the United Kingdom

References

External links

History of Duo Airways and its predecessors, including Birmingham European Airways (in German)
New 'Birmingham European Airways' site

Defunct airlines of the United Kingdom
Airlines established in 1983
Airlines disestablished in 1992
1983 establishments in England
1992 disestablishments in England
Xerox NoteTaker. The Xerox NoteTaker is a portable computer developed at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California, in 1978. Although it did not enter production, and only around ten prototypes were built, it strongly influenced the design of the later Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable computers.

Development
The NoteTaker was developed by a team that included Adele Goldberg, Douglas Fairbairn, and Larry Tesler. It drew heavily on earlier research by Alan Kay, who had previously developed the Dynabook project. While the Dynabook was a concept for a transportable computer that was impossible to implement with available technology, the NoteTaker was intended to show what could be done.

Description
The computer employed what was then highly advanced technology, including a built-in monochrome display monitor, a floppy disk drive and a mouse. It had 256 KB of RAM, then a very large amount, and used a 5 MHz Intel 8086 CPU. It used a version of the Smalltalk operating system that was originally written for the Xerox Alto computer, which pioneered the graphical user interface.

The NoteTaker fitted into a case similar in form to that of a portable sewing machine; the keyboard folded out from the bottom to reveal the monitor and floppy drive. The form factor was later used on the highly successful "luggable" computers, including the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable. However, these later models were about half as heavy as the NoteTaker, which weighed .

See also
 IBM 5100
 Osborne 1
 Kaypro
 Compaq Portable
 Portable computer

References

External links 
Firmware - memos - schematics for NoteTaker

Portable computers
NoteTaker
Prototypes
Computer-related introductions in 1978