Query: This “blocking” effect means extreme events can unfold.”

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Variable star <=SEP=> A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth ( its apparent magnitude ) fluctuates .   This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light , so variable stars are classified as either :  Intrinsic variables , whose luminosity actually changes ; for example , because the star periodically swells and shrinks .  Extrinsic variables , whose apparent changes in brightness are due to changes in the amount of their light that can reach Earth ; for example , because the star has an orbiting companion that sometimes eclipses it .   Many , possibly most , stars have at least some variation in luminosity : the energy output of our Sun , for example , varies by about 0.1 % over an 11-year solar cycle .

List of memory biases <=SEP=> In psychology and cognitive science , a memory bias is a cognitive bias that either enhances or impairs the recall of a memory ( either the chances that the memory will be recalled at all , or the amount of time it takes for it to be recalled , or both ) , or that alters the content of a reported memory . There are many different types of memory biases , including :   Change bias : after an investment of effort in producing change , remembering one 's past performance as more difficult than it actually was .  Childhood amnesia : the retention of few memories from before the age of four .  Choice-supportive bias : remembering chosen options as having been better than rejected options ( Mather , Shafir & Johnson , 2000 )  Confirmation bias : the tendency to search for , interpret , or recall information in a way that confirms one 's beliefs or hypotheses .  Conservatism or Regressive bias : tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies lower than they actually were and low ones higher than they actually were . Based on the evidence , memories are not extreme enough .  Consistency bias : incorrectly remembering one 's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour .  Context effect : that cognition and memory are dependent on context , such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories ( e.g. , recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home , and vice versa ) .  Cryptomnesia : a form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination , because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory .  Egocentric bias : recalling the past in a self-serving manner , e.g. , remembering one 's exam grades as being better than they were , or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was .  Fading affect bias : a bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events .  Generation effect ( Self-generation effect ) : that self-generated information is remembered best . For instance , people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others .  Gender differences in eyewitness memory : the tendency for a witness to remember more details about someone of the same gender .  Hindsight bias : the inclination to see past events as being predictable ; also called the `` I-knew-it-all-along '' effect .  Humor effect : that humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones , which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor , the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor , or the emotional arousal caused by the humor .  Illusion-of-truth effect : that people are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard ( even if they can not consciously remember having heard them ) , regardless of the actual validity of the statement . In other words , a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one .  Illusory correlation : inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence .  Lag effect : see spacing effect .  Leveling and sharpening : memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time , often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling . Both biases may be reinforced over time , and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory .  Levels-of-processing effect : that different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness ( Craik & Lockhart , 1972 ) .  List-length effect : a smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list , but as the length of the list increases , the absolute number of items remembered increases as well .  Memory inhibition : that being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items ( e.g. , Slamecka , 1968 ) .  Misattribution of memory : when information is retained in memory but the source of the memory is forgotten . One of Schacter 's ( 1999 ) seven sins of memory , misattribution was divided into source confusion , cryptomnesia and false recall/false recognition .  Misinformation effect : that misinformation affects people 's reports of their own memory .  Modality effect : that memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received via writing .  Mood congruent memory bias : the improved recall of information congruent with one 's current mood .  Next-in-line effect : that a person in a group has diminished recall for the words of others who spoke immediately before or after this person .  Peak-end rule : that people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak ( e.g. pleasant or unpleasant ) and how it ended .  Persistence : the unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event .  Picture superiority effect : that concepts are much more likely to be remembered experientially if they are presented in picture form than if they are presented in word form .  Placement bias : tendency to remember ourselves to be better than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves above average ( also Illusory superiority or Better-than-average effect ) and tendency to remember ourselves to be worse than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves below average ( also Worse-than-average effect ) .  Positivity effect : that older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories .  Primacy effect , Recency effect & Serial position effect : that items near the end of a list are the easiest to recall , followed by the items at the beginning of a list ; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered .  Processing difficulty effect .  Reminiscence bump : the recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods ( Rubin , Wetzler & Nebes , 1986 ; Rubin , Rahhal & Poon , 1998 ) .  Rosy retrospection : the remembering of the past as having been better than it really was .  Saying is Believing effect : Communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one 's own thoughts .  Self-reference effect : the phenomena that memories encoded with relation to the self are better recalled than similar information encoded otherwise .  Self-serving bias : perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones .  Source confusion : misattributing the source of a memory , e.g. misremembering that one saw an event personally when actually it was seen on television .  Spacing effect : that information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a longer span of time .  Stereotypical bias : memory distorted towards stereotypes ( e.g. racial or gender ) , e.g. `` black-sounding '' names being misremembered as names of criminals .  Subadditivity effect : the tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remembered event is less than the sum of its ( more than two ) mutually exclusive components .  Suffix effect : the weakening of the recency effect in the case that an item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall ( Morton , Crowder & Prussin , 1971 ) .  Suggestibility : a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory .  Telescoping effect : the tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward in time , so that recent events appear more remote , and remote events , more recent .  Testing effect : that frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall .  Tip of the tongue : when a subject is able to recall parts of an item , or related information , but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item . This is thought to be an instance of `` blocking '' where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other .  Verbatim effect : that the `` gist '' of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording ( Poppenk , Walia , Joanisse , Danckert , & Köhler , 2006 ) .  Von Restorff effect : that an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items ( von Restorff , 1933 ) .  Zeigarnik effect : that uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones .

Solar particle event <=SEP=> A solar proton event ( SPE ) , or `` proton storm '' , occurs when particles ( mostly protons ) emitted by the Sun become accelerated either close to the Sun during a flare or in interplanetary space by CME shocks . The events can include other nuclei such as helium ions and HZE ions . These particles cause multiple effects . They can penetrate the Earth 's magnetic field and cause ionization in the ionosphere . The effect is similar to auroral events , except that protons rather than electrons are involved . Energetic protons are a significant radiation hazard to spacecraft and astronauts .

Arab Spring <=SEP=> The Arab Spring ( الربيع العربي ar-Rabīʻ al-ʻArabī ) also referred to as Arab revolutions ( الثورات العربية aṯ - ` awrāt al-ʻarabiyyah ) or Democracy Spring ( الربيع الديمقراطي ar-Rabīʻ ad-Dīmuqrāṭī ) was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations , protests , riots , coups and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East that began on 17 December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution .   The Tunisian Revolution effect spread strongly to five other countries : Libya , Egypt , Yemen , Syria and Iraq , where either the regime was toppled or major uprisings and social violence occurred , including civil wars or insurgencies .   Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco , Bahrain , Algeria , Iran , Lebanon , Jordan , Kuwait , Oman and Sudan . Minor protests occurred in Djibouti , Mauritania , the Palestinian territories , Saudi Arabia , Somalia and the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara . A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām ( `` the people want to bring down the regime '' ) .   The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012 , as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities , as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators . These attacks were answered with violence from protestors in some cases .  Large-scale conflicts resulted -- the Syrian Civil War , Iraqi insurgency and the following civil war , the Egyptian Crisis and coup , the Libyan Crisis , and the Crisis in Yemen .   A power struggle continued after the immediate response to the Arab Spring . While leadership changed and regimes were held accountable , power went up for grabs across the Arab world . Ultimately it came down to a contentious battle between a consolidation of power by religious elites and the growing support for democracy in many Muslim-majority states . The early hopes that these popular movements would end corruption , increase political participation , and bring about greater economic equity , quickly collapsed in the wake of the counterrevolutionary moves of the deep state in Egypt , the regional and international interventions in Bahrain and Yemen , and the destructive civil wars in Syria and Libya .   Some have referred to the succeeding and still ongoing conflicts as the Arab Winter . As of July 2016 , only the uprising in Tunisia resulted in a transition to constitutional democratic governance .

List of cognitive biases <=SEP=> Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment , and are often studied in psychology and behavioral economics .   Although the reality of these biases is confirmed by replicable research , there are often controversies about how to classify these biases or how to explain them . Some are effects of information-processing rules ( i.e. , mental shortcuts ) , called heuristics , that the brain uses to produce decisions or judgments . Such effects are called cognitive biases . Biases have a variety of forms and appear as cognitive ( `` cold '' ) bias , such as mental noise , or motivational ( `` hot '' ) bias , such as when beliefs are distorted by wishful thinking . Both effects can be present at the same time .   There are also controversies over some of these biases as to whether they count as useless or irrational , or whether they result in useful attitudes or behavior . For example , when getting to know others , people tend to ask leading questions which seem biased towards confirming their assumptions about the person . However , this kind of confirmation bias has also been argued to be an example of social skill : a way to establish a connection with the other person .   Although this research overwhelmingly involves human subjects , some findings that demonstrate bias have been found in non-human animals as well . For example , hyperbolic discounting has been observed in rats , pigeons , and monkeys .