omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
William Douglas Allen. William Douglas Allen (27 July 1914 – 7 May 2008) was a physicist and electrical engineer.

Allen was born on 27 July 1914 in Mussooree, British India. He was educated in South Australia at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide, where he received a BSc (Hons) in 1935. In 1937, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in 1940.

Career
From 1935 to 1937, Allen worked as a "Junior Demonstrator" in the Department of Physics of the University of Adelaide before proceeding to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

During the war, he completed his D.Phil. and from 1939 to 1944 worked as a scientific officer at the UK Ministry of Aircraft Production's Telecommunications Research Establishment. In 1944 he moved to the US to work as a scientific officer on the Manhattan Project.

In 1946 he returned to Australia to work at the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney. However, later in 1946 he returned to Britain and commenced a 30-year career as a physicist in the UK. From 1946 to 1961, he worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, and from 1961 to 1977, at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory.

In 1966 he became professor of engineering at the University of Reading.  He retired from Rutherford in 1977, and Reading in 1978, and took on the roles of visiting professor: 1978–79 he was visiting professor of physics at the University of the West Indies, Barbados, and 1979–81 he was visiting professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southampton, UK.

Publications
Some observations on the interface of mercury against water and aqueous solutions, with R.S. Burdon & J.W. Lillywhite, Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. Report of the Meeting., 23 (Auckland, 1937), 19.
Spreading with uniform acceleration, with K. Grant & R.S. Burdon, Faraday Society, London. Transactions., 33 (1937), 1531–1532.
Neutron detection, W.D. Allen, London : George Newnes, [c1960].
Gravitational radiation experiments at the University of Reading and the Rutherford Laboratory, with C. Christodoulides, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., 8 (1975), 1726–33.

Scholarships
1935 The John L. Young Scholarship
1937 Rhodes Scholarship

Sources
Allen, William Douglas (1914 – ), Bright Sparcs
'Allen, William Douglas', in Physics in Australia to 1945, R.W. Home, with the assistance of Paula J. Needham, Australian Science Archives Project, June 1995, http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/physics/P001585p.htm.
William Douglas Allen's obituary

References and notes

Australian Rhodes Scholars
1914 births
2008 deaths
People educated at Prince Alfred College
University of Adelaide alumni
Alumni of New College, Oxford
Academics of the University of Reading
Academics of the University of Southampton
Academic staff of the University of the West Indies
British people in colonial India
British expatriates in Australia
Banzai skydiving. Banzai skydiving is a rumored form of skydiving in which the skydiver throws their parachute out the airplane door, waits, and then jumps after it. To be successful, the skydiver must catch the parachute, secure it, and glide to the projected landing zone. There is no known, credible evidence that a banzai skydive has ever really occurred according to its definition.

There have however been multiple recorded instances of skydivers jumping without being attached to a parachute. However these jumps lack the element that make them a banzai skydive, where a parachute is thrown out of the plane then caught by the jumper after some delay. During skydives where the jumper is detached from the skydiving rig the rig is held by the skydiver or an assistant until the skydiver is secured to the rig. This is due to the skydiving rig having a much slower terminal velocity than a skydiver is capable of achieving. This has led the skydiving community to doubt the idea that banzai skydiving has ever occurred as defined.

Skydivers jumping while detached from a rig wear a special harness that attaches to a cord extending from the parachute. The cord can be clearly seen in Andreas Dachtler's jump video taken in Southeast Europe. This ensures the skydiver can safely recover the parachute. Otherwise, the legstraps on a normal harness would require a thread through. This would be impossible while in free fall.

The banzai skydive is the most dangerous category in the Guinness Book of World Records, according to Editor Craig Glenday. Yasuhiro Kubo took the challenge on September 2, 2000. Kubo supposedly fell alongside the rig for 50 seconds after jumping before regaining and deploying his parachute. Details about the jump are sparse and it is unknown whether Kubo or another skydiver held onto the rig while falling. This won him a place in the Guinness World Records. This claim however was not witnessed by a Guinness Book of World Records official, but was witnessed by an unknown expert. No video or photographic evidence exists to support the claim.

References 

Parachuting
Articles containing video clips
Blue Flint Ethanol. Blue Flint Ethanol is a bioethanol producing company and a production plant with a same name, located in Underwood, North Dakota approximately  north of Bismarck.  The plant is unique in the fact that rather than burning fuels, such as coal or natural gas to drive the production process, waste heat from electrical generation at the Coal Creek Station is used.  The US$100 million plant is capable of processing 18 million bushels (460,000 metric tons) of corn to produce 50 million gallons  (190 million liters) of ethanol each year, and is estimated to have a net annual economic impact of $160 million on the North Dakota economy, as well as the creation of approximately 40 new jobs to run the plant.  In addition to producing ethanol the plant will also produce dry distillers grains, a byproduct of the distillation process which is used as animal feed.  Of the 18 million bushels of corn used each year for feedstock, the majority will be grown in southeast North Dakota and brought in via rail, with the remaining one third being produced locally.  In 2006 the Blue Flint Ethanol project was awarded the Project of the Year Award by Governor John Hoeven.

History
The Coal Creek power station which provides the thermal input to the process began construction in 1974, becoming fully operational for electricity production in 1980.  The power plant had already been using heat from some of the steam to dry the lignite coal it burns as fuel, improving its efficiency, however 60% of the steam's heat energy was still being lost.  In 2005 Headwaters Incorporated, in conjunction with Great River Energy, announced their plans for the construction of an ethanol production facility collocated with the Coal Creek Power plant.  The plant will be majority owned by Headwaters who will manage the construction and plant operations, with GRE owning a minority share of the plant.  Construction of the facility took place during 2006 with ethanol production beginning in February 2007. In 2010, Headwaters sold its 51 percent ownership to Great River Energy which now has full ownership of the plant.

Similar facilities
Although the Blue Flint Ethanol plant is the first in the United States to utilize waste heat for ethanol production, other plants are starting to pursue similar strategies.  Great River Energy is also building a 62 megawatt baseload (37 megawatt peaking capacity) coal-fired boiler in Spiritwood, North Dakota which will produce both electricity, malt, and 100 million U.S. gallons (380 million liters) of ethanol yearly.  Additionally a 20 megawatt plant in Goodland, Kansas will produce electricity, ethanol, and biodiesel.

See also
 Cogeneration - commonly referred to as combined heat and power (CHP)
 Ethanol fuel in the United States
 Ethanol fermentation
 Corn ethanol
 Cellulosic ethanol
 Biofuel

References

Energy infrastructure completed in 2007
Alcohol fuel producers
Companies based in North Dakota
Energy infrastructure in North Dakota
McLean County, North Dakota
Manufacturing companies based in North Dakota
American companies established in 2007
Manufacturing companies established in 2007
Polkit. Polkit (formerly PolicyKit) is a component for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems. It provides an organized way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged ones. Polkit allows a level of control of centralized system policy. It is developed and maintained by David Zeuthen from Red Hat and hosted by the freedesktop.org project. It is published as free software under the terms of version 2 of the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Since version 0.105, released in April 2012, the name of the project was changed from PolicyKit to polkit to emphasize that the system component was rewritten and that the API had changed, breaking backward compatibility.

Fedora became the first distribution to include PolicyKit, and it has since been used in other distributions, including Ubuntu since version 8.04 and openSUSE since version 10.3. Some distributions, like Fedora, have already switched to the rewritten polkit.

It is also possible to use polkit to execute commands with elevated privileges using the command pkexec followed by the command intended to be executed (with root permission). However, it may be preferable to use sudo, as this command provides more flexibility and security, in addition to being easier to configure.

Implementation
The polkitd daemon implements Polkit functionality.

Vulnerability

A memory corruption vulnerability PwnKit (CVE-2021-4034) discovered in the pkexec command (installed on all major Linux distributions) was announced on January 25, 2022.  The vulnerability dates back to the original distribution from 2009. The vulnerability received a CVSS score of 7.8 ("High severity") reflecting serious factors involved in a possible exploit: unprivileged users can gain full root privileges, regardless of the underlying machine architecture or whether the polkit daemon is running or not.

See also 

 Pluggable authentication module
 Principle of least privilege
 PackageKit
 User Account Control – a similar feature introduced in Windows Vista and still exists in Windows 11

References

External links

 polkit GitHub repository at github.com
 Documentation at freedesktop.org
 Why polkit explaining polkit's role in a modern system

Computer security software
System administration
Free software programmed in C
Freedesktop.org
Unix software
Software using the GNU Lesser General Public License
Mixed Wood Plains Ecozone (CEC). The Mixed Wood Plains Ecozone is an ecozone of North America that was defined by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation to reconcile the American and Canadian land classification systems. According to the CEC, the Mixed Wood Plains of North America is a Level II Ecoregion 8.1, which includes the Mixedwood Plains of Canada, and the adjoining areas of the United States such as the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands ecoregion. However, the CEC atlas also includes areas of Wisconsin, Maine and New Brunswick in the Mixed Wood Plain ecoregion.

The United States uses a different terminology to Canada; the corresponding Level I ecoregion of the United States Environmental Protection Agency system is the Eastern Temperate Forest ecoregion. To deal with the differences in names between Canada and the United States, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation has produced a continental atlas, in which the Mixed Wood Plains is a Level II Ecoregion 8.1; this includes the above areas within Canada, as well as adjoining parts of the United States.

References

Ecozones of Canada
Forests of Ontario
Forests of Quebec
Max Holste MH.52. The Max Holste MH.52 was a 1940s French-built two-seat touring or training monoplane designed and constructed by Avions Max Holste.

Development and construction
Developed in the mid-1940s, the MH.52 was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with twin fins and rudders and a fixed tricycle landing gear. It had a cockpit with side-by-side seating for the pilot and trainee or passenger. The canopy was framed with forward-opening transparent sliding doors. The prototype first flew on 21 August 1945. The aircraft was powered by a variety of inline engines developing between 95 and 150 hp (71 to 112 kW).

A development of the MH.52 was the sole MH.53 Cadet which had a fixed tailwheel landing gear and a lower powered 135 hp (101 kW) de Havilland Gipsy Major 10 engine.

Operational history

A total of 13 production aircraft were built by the end of the 1940s. Most were flown by aero clubs and private pilots in France, but three examples were delivered to Egypt.

Surviving aircraft

Two MH.52s survived in the 2000s. No.4 is awaiting restoration to fly at an airfield near Paris.  No.11 is privately stored by a group located at an airfield near Bergerac.

Variants
Source: The Aircraft of the World.
MH.52M
initial model with tricycle landing gear powered by a Renault 4P engine of . Later changed to a Potez 4D engine of  (2 built)
MH.52G
MH.52M with de Havilland Gipsy Major 1 engine of  (6 built)
MH.52R
MH.52G with Renault 4P-01 engine of  (4 built) 
MH.53
Tailwheel landing gear version of the MH.52G powered by a de Havilland Gipsy Major 10 engine. (1 built)

Specifications (MH.52)

See also

Notes

References

 The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985), 1985, Orbis Publishing, Page 2435/6

1940s French civil utility aircraft
1940s French civil trainer aircraft
Max Holste aircraft
Single-engined tractor aircraft
Low-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1945
Twin-tail aircraft
Aircraft with fixed tricycle landing gear
Single-engined piston aircraft
ÉLECTRE. ÉLECTRE is a family of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods that originated in Europe in the mid-1960s.  The acronym ÉLECTRE stands for:  ("Elimination and Choice Translating Reality").

The method was first proposed by Bernard Roy and his colleagues at SEMA consultancy company. A team at SEMA was working on the concrete, multiple criteria, real-world problem of how firms could decide on new activities and had encountered problems using a weighted sum technique. Roy was called in as a consultant and the group devised the ELECTRE method. As it was first applied in 1965, the ELECTRE method was to choose the best action(s) from a given set of actions, but it was soon applied to three main problems: choosing, ranking and sorting. The method became more widely known when a paper by B. Roy appeared in a French operations research journal. It evolved into ELECTRE I (electre one) and the evolutions have continued with ELECTRE II, ELECTRE III, ELECTRE IV, ELECTRE IS and ELECTRE TRI (electre tree), to mention a few. They are used in the fields of business, development, design, and small hydropower.

Roy is widely recognized as the father of the ELECTRE method, which was one of the earliest approaches in what is sometimes known as the French school of decision making. It is usually classified as an "outranking method" of decision making.

There are two main parts to an ELECTRE application: first, the construction of one or several outranking relations, which aims at comparing in a comprehensive way each pair of actions; second, an exploitation procedure that elaborates on the recommendations obtained in the first phase. The nature of the recommendation depends on the problem being addressed: choosing, ranking or sorting.

Criteria in ELECTRE methods have two distinct sets of parameters: the importance coefficients and the veto thresholds. ELECTRE method cannot determine the weights of the criteria. In this regard, it can be combined with other approaches such as Ordinal Priority Approach, Analytic Hierarchy Process, etc.

References

External links 

 Decision Radar : A free online ELECTRE calculator written in Python.

Decision analysis
Mathematical optimization
Emigrant Lake (Oregon). Emigrant Lake is a reservoir located  southeast of Ashland, Oregon, at the southern end of the Rogue Valley. 
It has an elevation of  above sea level. 
The lake has an average surface area of , and an average volume of .
The lake is impounded by Emigrant Lake Dam, which stands  above the surrounding farmland, and is located on Emigrant Creek at the west side of the lake. The spillway is at the northern tip of the lake. Emigrant Creek is a tributary of Bear Creek.

History
The reservoir was created in 1924 when the original  concrete arch dam was built by the Talent Irrigation District for irrigation and flood control. 
In 1960, the United States Bureau of Reclamation enlarged the dam into the  rock-filled structure standing today.

Recreation area

Emigrant Lake features a large recreation area. This includes a 42-site, full-hookup campground,
picnic areas, and two  water slides open from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
As of 2022, the slides are no longer operating due to the cost of repairs.

Drought conditions and archaeological study
In October 2014, drought conditions prompted the Bureau of Reclamation to order an archaeological study to protect artifacts that have become exposed due to the lake being at less than 10 percent of capacity. During the 2020–21 North American drought, the lake reached 3% capacity.

See also
 List of lakes in Oregon

References

External links

Emigrant
Lakes of Jackson County, Oregon
Buildings and structures in Jackson County, Oregon
Protected areas of Jackson County, Oregon
Dams in Oregon
United States Bureau of Reclamation dams
Dams completed in 1924
1924 establishments in Oregon
Top-nodes algorithm. The top-nodes algorithm is an algorithm for managing a resource reservation calendar. The algorithm has been first published in 2003, and has been improved in 2009. It is used when a resource is shared among many users (for example bandwidth in a telecommunication link, or disk capacity in a large data center).

The algorithm allows users to:
 check if an amount of resource is available during a specific period of time,
 reserve an amount of resource for a specific period of time,
 delete a previous reservation,
 move the calendar forward (the calendar covers a defined duration, and it must be moved forward as time goes by).

Principle
The calendar is stored as a binary tree where leaves represent elementary time periods. Other nodes represent the period of time covered by all their descendants.

The period of time covered by a reservation is represented by a set of "top-nodes". This set is the minimal set of nodes that exactly cover the reservation period of time.

A node of the binary tree is a "top-node" for a given reservation if
 all its descendants are inside the reservation period of time, and
 it is the root node, or at least one descendant of the parent node is outside of the reservation period of time.

The following value is stored in each node:
 q(node) = max(q(left child), q(right child))
           + total amount of reserved resource for all reservations having this node as a "top-node"
(for code optimization, the two parts of this sum are usually stored separately.)

Performance
The advantage of this algorithm is that the time to register a new resource reservation depends only on the calendar size (it does not depend on the total number of reservations).

Let  be the number of elementary periods in the calendar.

The maximal number of "top-nodes" for a given reservation is 2.log n.
 to check if an amount of resource is available during a specific period of time : O(log n)
 to reserve an amount of resource for a specific period of time : O(log n)
 to delete a previous reservation : O(log n)
 to move the calendar forward : O(log n + M.log n)
where  is the number of reservations that are active during the added calendar periods.

( = 0 if reservations are not allowed after the end of the calendar.)

References

External links
  C source code

Scheduling algorithms
AREMOS. AREMOS is a data management and econometrics software package released by Global Insight. It was most popular in the late 1980s and 1990s, when it was used by leading economists. Developed as a DOS application by Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates – WEFA now IHS Markit, it has gone through many iterations. Thomsons' Datastream macroeconomic databases which were accessible with AREMOS, were a key selling point.

The U.S. statistical agency Bureau of Economic Analysis ran AREMOS extensively until 2015.

Today its use is largely legacy and has been superseded by newer econometric packages such as EViews, developed by WEFA successor company, IHS Markit. Although sales of AREMOS to new customers ended in late 2015, certain existing customers were given the option to purchase a perpetual license which doesn't expire until the end of 2036.

References

Econometrics software
Atlantic Basin Iron Works. The Atlantic Basin Iron Works was a ship repair and conversion facility that operated in Brooklyn, New York, from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. It converted numerous ships to military use in World War II. 

Founded before 1910, the yard had its headquarters at 18–20 Summit Street. By 1920, the yard was known for its construction and repair of oil-fired boilers, diesel engines, and refrigeration units.

In World War II the company specialized in ship conversion and repair, and like most US shipyards at the time, it was heavily contracted for work by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Maritime Commission.

In 1941–42 the company converted the 9,300-ton passenger and cargo steamship Rio Parana into the British Royal Navy escort carrier .

The company's owner, Bernard A. Moran, was strongly anti-union and had defied attempts by the CIO's Marine and Shipbuilding Workers Union to secure a contract with the company since November 1938. His approach became problematic in the war after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's War Labor Board ordered Moran under its broad war powers to sign a union security (maintenance-of-membership) contract. In spite of warnings that he might lose all his government contracts or have his company seized, Moran remained intransigent, and after three months of legal wrangling, the government made good on its threat and seized the company in September 1943, taking direct control of its management.

In 1947–48 the shipyard converted the  troopship USAT Brazil back into the Moore-McCormack Lines ocean liner . It was the largest peacetime conversion the yard had yet undertaken, and cost $9 million.

The western part of the site was used later for the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which opened in April 2006.

Notes

References

Defunct shipbuilding companies of the United States
Companies based in Brooklyn
Transportation in New York (state)
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York City