synth_record_id stringlengths 15 19 | outcome_type stringclasses 3 values | category stringclasses 39 values | type stringclasses 17 values | function_structure stringclasses 2 values | seed_url stringlengths 31 120 | seed_section_id int32 1 120 | seed_text stringlengths 13 28k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
synth_fc_3368_rep7 | Negative | Store & Facility | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town | 9 | Chile
In Chile, towns (Spanish: pueblos) are defined by the National Statistics Institute (INE) as an urban entity with a population from 2001 to 5000 or an area with a population from 1001 to 2000 and an established economic activity. |
synth_fc_2860_rep23 | Positive | Restaurant | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad | 11 | Wedge salad
A wedge salad is a green salad made from a head of lettuce (often iceberg), halved or quartered, with other ingredients on top. |
synth_fc_894_rep24 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance) | 19 | Exchange-traded derivatives
Exchange-traded derivatives (ETD) are those derivatives instruments that are traded via specialized derivatives exchanges or other exchanges. A derivatives exchange is a market where individuals trade standardized contracts that have been defined by the exchange. A derivatives exchange acts as an intermediary to all related transactions, and takes initial margin from both sides of the trade to act as a guarantee. The world's largest derivatives exchanges (by number of transactions) are the Korea Exchange (which lists KOSPI Index Futures & Options), Eurex (which lists a wide range of European products such as interest rate & index products), and CME Group (made up of the 2007 merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade and the 2008 acquisition of the New York Mercantile Exchange). According to BIS, the combined turnover in the world's derivatives exchanges totaled US$344 trillion during Q4 2005. By December 2007 the Bank for International Settlements reported that "derivatives traded on exchanges surged 27% to a record $681 trillion." |
synth_fc_2733_rep8 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy | 8 | Submarines
Submarines rise and dive by filling large ballast tanks with seawater. To dive, the tanks are opened to allow air to exhaust out the top of the tanks, while the water flows in from the bottom. Once the weight has been balanced so the overall density of the submarine is equal to the water around it, it has neutral buoyancy and will remain at that depth. Most military submarines operate with a slightly negative buoyancy and maintain depth by using the "lift" of the stabilizers with forward motion. |
synth_fc_89_rep14 | Positive | Astronomy | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race | 34 | Origins
Although Germans, Americans and Soviets experimented with small liquid-fuel rockets before World War II, launching satellites and humans into space required the development of larger ballistic missiles such as Wernher von Braun 's Aggregat-4 (A-4), which became known as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2) developed by Nazi Germany to bomb the Allies in the war. After the war, both the US and USSR acquired custody of German rocket development assets which they used to leverage the development of their own missiles.
Public interest in space flight was first aroused in October 1951 when the Soviet rocketry engineer Mikhail Tikhonravov published "Flight to the Moon" in the newspaper Pionerskaya pravda for young readers. He described a two-person interplanetary spaceship of the future and the industrial and technological processes required to create it. He ended the short article with a clear forecast of the future: "We do not have long to wait. We can assume that the bold dream of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky will be realized within the next 10 to 15 years." From March 1952 to April 1954, the US Collier's magazine reacted with a series of seven articles Man Will Conquer Space Soon! detailing Wernher von Braun 's plans for crewed spaceflight. In March 1955, Disneyland's animated episode " Man in Space " in the US television with an audience of about 40 million people eventually fired the public enthusiasm for space travel and raised government interest, both in the US and USSR. |
synth_fc_45_rep8 | Negative | Architecture | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-cell | 4 | As a configuration
This configuration matrix represents the 16-cell. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges, faces, and cells. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole 16-cell. The nondiagonal numbers say how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element.
{\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}{\begin{matrix}8&6&12&8\\2&24&4&4\\3&3&32&2\\4&6&4&16\end{matrix}}\end{bmatrix}}} |
synth_fc_2361_rep28 | Positive | Linguistics | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_music | 6 | Ajnas
The maqam consists of at least two ajnas, or scale segments. Ajnas is the plural form of jins, which in Arabic comes from the Latin word genus, meaning "type". In practice, a jins is either a trichord (three notes), a tetrachord (four notes), or a pentachord (five notes). A maqam usually covers only one octave (usually two ajnas), but can cover more. Like the melodic minor scale, some maqamat use different ajnas when descending and ascending. Due to continuous innovation and the emergence of new ajnas, and because most music scholars have not reached consensus on the subject, a solid figure for the total number of ajnas in use is uncertain. In practice, however, most musicians would agree there are at least eight major ajnas: rast, bayat, sikah, hijaz, saba, kurd, nahawand, and ajam, and commonly used variants such as nakriz, athar kurd, sikah beladi, saba zamzama. For example, Mukhalif is a rare jins (in the Sikah) family used almost exclusively in Iraq, and it is not used in combination with other ajnas. |
synth_fc_1309_rep15 | Positive | Food | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla | 21 | Scheduling considerations
In the tropics, the ideal time for planting vanilla is from September to November, when the weather is neither too rainy nor too dry, but this recommendation varies with growing conditions. Cuttings take one to eight weeks to establish roots, and show initial signs of growth from one of the leaf axils. A thick mulch of leaves should be provided immediately after planting as an additional source of organic matter. Three years are required for cuttings to grow enough to produce flowers and subsequent pods. As with most orchids, the blossoms grow along stems branching from the main vine. The buds, growing along the 6 to 10 in (15 to 25 cm) stems, bloom and mature in sequence, each at a different interval. |
synth_fc_3205_rep30 | Positive | Sport | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha | 44 | Stadiums and sport complexes
Aspire Academy was launched in 2004 with the aim of creating world-class athletes. It is situated in the Doha Sports City Complex, which also accommodates the Khalifa International Stadium, the Hamad Aquatic Centre, the Aspire Tower, and the Aspire Dome. The latter has hosted more than 50 sporting events since its inception, including some events during the 2006 Asian Games. Aspire Academy, a sporting academy for youth, is located in the center of Aspire Zone.
Sporting venues in Doha and its suburbs include: |
synth_fc_1807_rep2 | No function call | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium | 10 | Isotopes
Iridium has two naturally occurring stable isotopes, Ir and Ir, with natural abundances of 37.3% and 62.7%, respectively. At least 37 radioisotopes have also been synthesized, ranging in mass number from 164 to 202. Ir, which falls between the two stable isotopes, is the most stable radioisotope, with a half-life of 73.827 days, and finds application in brachytherapy and in industrial radiography, particularly for nondestructive testing of welds in steel in the oil and gas industries; iridium-192 sources have been involved in a number of radiological accidents. Three other isotopes have half-lives of at least a day— Ir, Ir, and Ir. Isotopes with masses below 191 decay by some combination of β decay, α decay, and (rare) proton emission, with the exception of Ir, which decays by electron capture. Synthetic isotopes heavier than 191 decay by β decay, although Ir also has a minor electron capture decay path. All known isotopes of iridium were discovered between 1934 and 2008, with the most recent discoveries being Ir.
At least 32 metastable isomers have been characterized, ranging in mass number from 164 to 197. The most stable of these is Ir, which decays by isomeric transition with a half-life of 241 years, making it more stable than any of iridium's synthetic isotopes in their ground states. The least stable isomer is Ir with a half-life of only 2 μs. The isotope Ir was the first one of any element to be shown to present a Mössbauer effect. This renders it useful for Mössbauer spectroscopy for research in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, metallurgy, and mineralogy. |
synth_fc_2537_rep30 | Positive | Museum | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Pompidou | 1 | Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was a French politician who served as President of France from 1969 to his death in 1974. He was earlier the longest-ever Prime Minister of France, under President Charles de Gaulle, from 1962 to 1968. In the context of the strong growth of the last years of the Trente Glorieuses, Pompidou continued De Gaulle's policy of modernisation, which was symbolised by the presidential use of the Concorde, the creation of large industrial groups and the launch of the high-speed train project (TGV). The government invested heavily in the automobile, agribusiness, steel, telecommunications, nuclear and aerospace sectors and also created the minimum wage (SMIC) and the Ministry of the Environment. His foreign policy was pragmatic but in line with the Gaullist principle of French independence. It was marked by a warming of relations with Richard Nixon's United States, close relations with Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union, the launch of the snake in the tunnel and the relaunching of European construction by facilitating the United Kingdom's entry to the EEC in contrast to de Gaulle's opposition. Pompidou died in office in 1974 of Waldenström's disease, a rare form of blood cancer. An admirer of contemporary art, Pompidou's name remains known worldwide for the Centre Pompidou, which he initiated and was inaugurated in 1977; it subsequently spread the name with its branches in Metz (France), Málaga (Spain), Brussels (Belgium) and Shanghai (China). A Georges Pompidou Museum is also dedicated to him in his hometown. |
synth_fc_3445_rep12 | Positive | Time | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_holidays | 1 | Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or Yamim Tovim, are holidays observed by Jews throughout the Hebrew calendar. They include religious, cultural and national elements, derived from three sources: mitzvot, rabbinic mandates, the history of Judaism, and the State of Israel. Jewish holidays occur on the same dates every year in the Hebrew calendar, but the dates vary in the Gregorian. This is because the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar, whereas the Gregorian is a solar calendar. Each holiday can only occur on certain days of the week, four for most, but five for holidays in Tevet and Shevat and six for Hanukkah. |
synth_fc_150_rep7 | Positive | Biology | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_form | 19 | Real quadratic forms
A fundamental problem is the classification of real quadratic forms under a linear change of variables.
Jacobi proved that, for every real quadratic form, there is an orthogonal diagonalization; that is, an orthogonal change of variables that puts the quadratic form in a " diagonal form "
where the associated symmetric matrix is diagonal. Moreover, the coefficients λ, λ,..., λ are determined uniquely up to a permutation.
If the change of variables is given by an invertible matrix that is not necessarily orthogonal, one can suppose that all coefficients λ are 0, 1, or −1. Sylvester's law of inertia states that the numbers of each 0, 1, and −1 are invariants of the quadratic form, in the sense that any other diagonalization will contain the same number of each. The signature of the quadratic form is the triple (n, n, n), where these components count the number of 0s, number of 1s, and the number of −1s, respectively. Sylvester's law of inertia shows that this is a well-defined quantity attached to the quadratic form.
The case when all λ have the same sign is especially important: in this case the quadratic form is called positive definite (all 1) or negative definite (all −1). If none of the terms are 0, then the form is called nondegenerate; this includes positive definite, negative definite, and isotropic quadratic form (a mix of 1 and −1); equivalently, a nondegenerate quadratic form is one whose associated symmetric form is a nondegenerate bilinear form. A real vector space with an indefinite nondegenerate quadratic form of index (p, q) (denoting p 1s and q −1s) is often denoted as R particularly in the physical theory of spacetime.
The discriminant of a quadratic form, concretely the class of the determinant of a representing matrix in K / (K) (up to non-zero squares) can also be defined, and for a real quadratic form is a cruder invariant than signature, taking values of only "positive, zero, or negative". Zero corresponds to degenerate, while for a non-degenerate form it is the parity of the number of negative coefficients, (−1).
These results are reformulated in a different way below.
Let q be a quadratic form defined on an n -dimensional real vector space. Let A be the matrix of the quadratic form q in a given basis. This means that A is a symmetric n × n matrix such that
where x is the column vector of coordinates of v in the chosen basis. Under a change of basis, the column x is multiplied on the left by an n × n invertible matrix S, and the symmetric square matrix A is transformed into another symmetric square matrix B of the same size according to the formula
Any symmetric matrix A can be transformed into a diagonal matrix
by a suitable choice of an orthogonal matrix S, and the diagonal entries of B are uniquely determined – this is Jacobi's theorem. If S is allowed to be any invertible matrix then B can be made to have only 0, 1, and −1 on the diagonal, and the number of the entries of each type (n for 0, n for 1, and n for −1) depends only on A. This is one of the formulations of Sylvester's law of inertia and the numbers n and n are called the positive and negative indices of inertia. Although their definition involved a choice of basis and consideration of the corresponding real symmetric matrix A, Sylvester's law of inertia means that they are invariants of the quadratic form q.
The quadratic form q is positive definite if q (v) > 0 (similarly, negative definite if q (v) < 0) for every nonzero vector v. When q (v) assumes both positive and negative values, q is an isotropic quadratic form. The theorems of Jacobi and Sylvester show that any positive definite quadratic form in n variables can be brought to the sum of n squares by a suitable invertible linear transformation: geometrically, there is only one positive definite real quadratic form of every dimension. Its isometry group is a compact orthogonal group O(n). This stands in contrast with the case of isotropic forms, when the corresponding group, the indefinite orthogonal group O(p, q), is non-compact. Further, the isometry groups of Q and − Q are the same (O(p, q) ≈ O(q, p)), but the associated Clifford algebras (and hence pin groups) are different. |
synth_fc_455_rep21 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database removal | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control | 24 | Technology
Many technologies are used in air traffic control systems. Primary and secondary radar are used to enhance a controller's situation awareness within their assigned airspace; all types of aircraft send back primary echoes of varying sizes to controllers' screens as radar energy is bounced off their skins, and transponder -equipped aircraft reply to secondary radar interrogations by giving an ID (Mode A), an altitude (Mode C), and / or a unique callsign (Mode S). Certain types of weather may also register on the radar screen. These inputs, added to data from other radars, are correlated to build the air situation. Some basic processing occurs on the radar tracks, such as calculating ground speed and magnetic headings.
Usually, a flight data processing system manages all the flight plan related data, incorporating, in a low or high degree, the information of the track once the correlation between them (flight plan and track) is established. All this information is distributed to modern operational display systems, making it available to controllers.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has spent over US$3 billion on software, but a fully automated system is still yet to be achieved. In 2002, the United Kingdom commissioned a new area control centre into service at the London Area Control Centre (LACC) at Swanwick in Hampshire, relieving a busy suburban centre at West Drayton in Middlesex, north of London Heathrow Airport. Software from Lockheed-Martin predominates at the London Area Control Centre. However, the centre was initially troubled by software and communications problems causing delays and occasional shutdowns.
Some tools are available in different domains to help the controller further: |
synth_fc_499_rep11 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database update | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_(graph_theory) | 6 | Maximum-cardinality matching
A fundamental problem in combinatorial optimization is finding a maximum matching. This problem has various algorithms for different classes of graphs.
In an unweighted bipartite graph, the optimization problem is to find a maximum cardinality matching. The problem is solved by the Hopcroft-Karp algorithm in time O (√ V E) time, and there are more efficient randomized algorithms, approximation algorithms, and algorithms for special classes of graphs such as bipartite planar graphs, as described in the main article. |
synth_fc_2241_rep20 | Positive | Law | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide | 3 | Development
According to the legal instrument used to prosecute defeated German leaders at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, atrocity crimes were only prosecutable by international justice if they were committed as part of an illegal war of aggression. The powers prosecuting the trial were unwilling to restrict a government's actions against its own citizens. In order to criminalize peacetime genocide, Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946. He approached the African delegations first in an attempt to build a coalition of smaller states and former colonies that had themselves recently experienced genocide. Lemkin hoped that at this point the major powers—the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union—would step in and take credit for passing the convention.
Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to various countries, and not just great powers, concerned that it would lead their own policies - including treatment of indigenous peoples, European colonialism, racial segregation in the United States, and Soviet nationalities policy - to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their geopolitical rivals ' actions but not their own. The result gutted Lemkin's original intentions; he privately considered it a failure. Over the course of these revisions, Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one acceptable to colonial powers. Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide included the same actions targeting political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking. Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out. Additionally omitted was forced migration of populations —which had been recently carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe. |
synth_fc_3262_rep2 | Positive | Sport | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cali | 31 | Infrastructure
Cali's infrastructure has permitted it to host several major international sports competitions such as the 1971 Pan American Games, numerous Games of the Pacific, the final phase of the 1982 World basketball championship, the 1999 World's Roller Hockey Championships, women's basketball and swimming events, Pan American Speed-Track Cycling Championships, and most recently the World's Roller Speed Skating Championships. Cali was the host city of the World Games 2013. |
synth_fc_1373_rep28 | Positive | Food | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco | 4 | Cuisine
Moroccan cuisine is considered one of the most diversified cuisines in the world. This is a result of the centuries-long interaction of Morocco with the outside world. The cuisine of Morocco is mainly a fusion of Moorish, European and Mediterranean cuisines.
Spices are used extensively in Moroccan cuisine. While spices have been imported to Morocco for thousands of years, many ingredients such as saffron from Tiliouine, mint and olives from Meknes, and oranges and lemons from Fez, are home-grown. Chicken is the most widely eaten meat in Morocco. The most commonly eaten red meat in Morocco is beef; lamb is preferred but is relatively expensive. The main Moroccan dish most people are familiar with is couscous, the old national delicacy.
Beef is the most commonly eaten red meat in Morocco, usually eaten in a Tagine with vegetables or legumes. Chicken is also very commonly used in Tagines, knowing that one of the most famous tagine is the Tagine of Chicken, potatoes and olives. Lamb is also consumed, but as Northwest African sheep breeds store most of their fat in their tails, Moroccan lamb does not have the pungent flavour that Western lamb and mutton have. Poultry is also very common, and the use of seafood is increasing in Moroccan food. In addition, there are dried salted meats and salted preserved meats such as kliia/khlia and "g'did" which are used to flavor tagines or used in "el ghraif" a folded savory Moroccan pancake.
Among the most famous Moroccan dishes are Couscous, Pastilla (also spelled Bsteeya or Bestilla), Tajine, Tanjia and Harira. Although the latter is a soup, it is considered a dish in itself and is served as such or with dates especially during the month of Ramadan. Pork consumption is forbidden in accordance with Sharia, religious laws of Islam.
A big part of the daily meal is bread. Bread in Morocco is principally from durum wheat semolina known as khobz. Bakeries are very common throughout Morocco and fresh bread is a staple in every city, town and village. The most common is whole grain coarse ground or white flour bread. There are also a number of flat breads and pulled unleavened pan-fried breads.
The most popular drink is "atai", green tea with mint leaves and other ingredients. Tea occupies a very important place in the culture of Morocco and is considered an art form. It is served not only at mealtimes but all through the day, and it is especially a drink of hospitality, commonly served whenever there are guests. It is served to guests, and it is impolite to refuse it. |
synth_fc_3643_rep14 | Positive | Video game | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_program | 1 | A radio program, radio programme, or radio show is a segment of content intended for broadcast on radio. It may be a one-time production, or part of a periodically recurring series. A single program in a series is called an episode. |
synth_fc_3805_rep16 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning | 15 | Flashes and strikes
The best-studied and understood form of lightning is cloud to ground (CG) lightning. Although more common, intra-cloud (IC) and cloud-to-cloud (CC) flashes are very difficult to study given there are no "physical" points to monitor inside the clouds. Also, given the very low probability of lightning striking the same point repeatedly and consistently, scientific inquiry is difficult even in areas of high CG frequency. |
synth_fc_1594_rep25 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liao_dynasty | 13 | Origins
The earliest reference to a Khitan state is found in the Book of Wei, a history of the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534) that was completed in 554. Several books written after 554 mention the Khitans being active during the late third and early fourth centuries. The Book of Jin (648), a history of the Jin dynasty (266–420), refers to the Khitans in the section covering the reign of Murong Sheng (398–401). Samguk Sagi (1145), a history of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, mentions a Khitan raid taking place in 378.
According to sinologists Denis C. Twitchett and Klaus-Peter Tietze, it is generally held that the Khitans emerged from the Yuwen branch of the Xianbei people. Following a defeat at the hands of another branch of the Xianbei in 345, the Yuwen split into three tribes, one of which was called the Kumo Xi. In 388 the Kumo Xi itself split, with one group remaining under the name Kumo Xi and the other group becoming the Khitans. This view is partially backed up by the Book of Wei, which describes the Khitans being of Xianbei origins. Beginning in the Song dynasty, some Chinese scholars suggested that the Khitans might have descended from the Xiongnu people. While modern historians have rejected the idea that the Khitan were solely Xiongnu in origin, there is some support for the claim that they are of mixed Xianbei and Xiongnu origin. Beginning with Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in the fourteenth century, several scholars have theorized that the Khitans were Mongolic in origin, and in the late 19th century, Western scholars made the claim that the Khitans were Tungusic in origin – modern linguistic analysis has discredited this claim.
After splitting from the Yuwen, the Khitans and Kumo Xi fled to the region of Songmo (modern southern Hexigten Banner and western Ongniud Banner). According to the New Book of Tang, the territory of the Khitans rested on what is now the area south of Xar Moron River and east of the Laoha. The Khitans then faced a joint invasion by the Rouran Khaganate and Goguryeo, which caused them to migrate south to the east of Bailang River (modern Daling River).
By the time the Book of Wei was written in 554, the Khitans had formed a state in what is now China's Jilin and Liaoning Provinces. The Khitans suffered a series of military defeats to other nomadic groups in the region, as well as to the Chinese Northern Qi (550–577) and Sui (589–618) dynasties. Khitan tribes at various times fell under the influence of Turkic tribes such as the Uighurs and Chinese dynasties such as the Sui and Tang. In the Book of Sui (Volume 84), the Khitan are described as "bellicose in plundering and raiding borders" and "the most uncourteous and arrogant among all barbarians".
Living in the frigid and windy Northern Desert, the Khitan people made animal husbandry, hunting and fishing their occupations, which could provide them (meat, fish and milk) for food, wool and hides for clothing. They used the horsedrawn cart for their shelters throughout the seasonal migrations. In the ancient Khitan way of life their wealth consisted of horses and their strength of soldiers. The horses were released in the open country and the soldiers were demobilized among the people. Whenever a military campaign occurred, they were called to arms. The mounted archers and armed soldiers received their orders at the hour mao and assembled at the hour chen. The horses went after water and grass and men depended on kumiss. They bent the powerful bow and shot living animals in order to provide for their daily needs. They also had dried food and fodder. Such was their way of living. On account of this, they hold the upper hand and encountered no opposition whenever they went. |
synth_fc_615_rep25 | Positive | Currency | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass) | 2 | Current use
The United States and the Commonwealth of Nations agreed upon common definitions for the pound and the yard. Since 1 July 1959, the international avoirdupois pound (symbol lb) has been defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kg.
In the United Kingdom, the use of the international pound was implemented in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.
The yard or the metre shall be the unit of measurement of length and the pound or the kilogram shall be the unit of measurement of mass by reference to which any measurement involving a measurement of length or mass shall be made in the United Kingdom; and- (a) the yard shall be 0.9144 metre exactly; (b) the pound shall be 0.453 592 37 kilogram exactly.
An avoirdupois pound is equal to 16 avoirdupois ounces and to exactly 7,000 grains. The conversion factor between the kilogram and the international pound was therefore chosen to be divisible by 7 with a terminating decimal representation, and an (international) grain is thus equal to exactly 64.798 91 milligrams.
In the United Kingdom, the process of metrication and European units of measurement directives were expected to eliminate the use of the pound and ounce, but in 2007 the European Commission abandoned the requirement for metric-only labelling on packaged goods there, and allowed for dual metric – imperial marking to continue indefinitely.
In the United States, the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 declared the metric system to be the "preferred system of weights and measures" but did not suspend use of United States customary units, and the United States is the only industrialised country where commercial activities do not predominantly use the metric system, despite many efforts to do so, and the pound remains widely used as one of the key customary units. |
synth_fc_2717_rep16 | Negative | Music | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones | 1 | The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pioneered the gritty, rhythmically driven sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up consisted of vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts. During their early years, Jones was the primary leader. Andrew Loog Oldham became their manager in 1963 and encouraged them to write their own songs. The Jagger–Richards partnership became the band's primary songwriting and creative force.
Rooted in blues and early rock and roll, the Rolling Stones started out playing covers and were at the forefront of the British Invasion in 1964, becoming identified with the youthful counterculture of the 1960s. They then found greater success with their own material, as " (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction ", " Get Off of My Cloud " (both 1965), and " Paint It Black " (1966) became international number-one hits. Aftermath (1966), their first entirely original album, is often considered to be the most important of their early albums. In 1967, they had the double-sided hit " Ruby Tuesday "/" Let's Spend the Night Together " and experimented with psychedelic rock on Their Satanic Majesties Request. By the end of the 1960s, they had returned to their rhythm and blues -based rock sound, with hit singles " Jumpin' Jack Flash " (1968) and " Honky Tonk Women " (1969), and albums Beggars Banquet (1968), featuring " Sympathy for the Devil " and " Street Fighting Man ", and Let It Bleed (1969), featuring " You Can't Always Get What You Want " and " Gimme Shelter ".
Jones left the band shortly before his death in 1969, having been replaced by Mick Taylor. That year they were first introduced on stage as " the greatest rock and roll band in the world ". Sticky Fingers (1971), which yielded " Brown Sugar " and " Wild Horses " and included the first usage of their tongue and lips logo, was their first of eight consecutive number-one studio albums in the US. It was followed by Exile on Main St. (1972), featuring " Tumbling Dice " and " Happy ", and Goats Head Soup (1973), featuring " Angie ". Taylor left the band at the end of 1974 and was replaced by Ronnie Wood. The band released Some Girls in 1978, featuring " Miss You " and " Beast of Burden ", and Tattoo You in 1981, featuring " Start Me Up ". Steel Wheels (1989) was widely considered a comeback album and was followed by Voodoo Lounge (1994). Both releases were promoted by large stadium and arena tours, as the Stones continued to be a huge concert attraction; by 2007, they had broken the record for the all-time highest-grossing concert tour three times, and they were the highest-earning live act of 2021. Following Wyman's departure in 1993, the band continued as a four-piece core, with Darryl Jones becoming their regular bassist, and then as a three-piece core following Watts' death in 2021, with Steve Jordan becoming their regular drummer. Hackney Diamonds, the band's first new album of original material in 18 years, was released in October 2023, becoming their fourteenth UK number-one album.
The Rolling Stones' estimated record sales of more than 250 million make them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. They have won three Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. Billboard and Rolling Stone have ranked them as one of the greatest artists of all time. |
synth_fc_265_rep3 | Positive | Biomass | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore | 14 | Metamorphic deposits
These are ore deposits which form as a direct result of metamorphism. |
synth_fc_2898_rep6 | Negative | Restaurant | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch | 3 | Festival
In the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Conch Festival is held in November each year at the Three Queens Bar/Restaurant in Blue Hills. Local restaurateurs compete for the best and most original conch dishes, which are then judged by international chefs. Other competitions, events, and music performances occur. |
synth_fc_1234_rep27 | Negative | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria | 9 | Economic sectors
The leading industry is steel, due to the Moldova Steel Works (part of the Russian Metalloinvest holding) in Rîbnița, which accounts for about 60% of the budget revenue of Transnistria. The largest company in the textile industry is Tirotex, which claims to be the second largest textile company in Europe. The energy sector is dominated by Russian companies. The largest power company Moldavskaya GRES (Cuciurgan power station) is in Dnestrovsc and owned by Inter RAO UES, and the gas transmission and distribution company Tiraspoltransgas is probably controlled by Gazprom, although Gazprom has not confirmed the ownership officially. The banking sector of Transnistria consists of 8 commercial banks, including Gazprombank. The oldest alcohol producer KVINT, located in Tiraspol, produces and exports brandy, wines and vodka. |
synth_fc_23_rep30 | Positive | Acoustics | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise | 8 | Regulation
Certain geographic areas or specific occupations may be at a higher risk of being exposed to constantly high levels of noise; regulation may prevent negative health outcomes. Noise regulation includes statutes or guidelines relating to sound transmission established by national, state or provincial and municipal levels of government. Environmental noise is governed by laws and standards which set maximum recommended levels of noise for specific land uses, such as residential areas, areas of outstanding natural beauty, or schools. These standards usually specify measurement using a weighting filter, most often A-weighting. |
synth_fc_1316_rep13 | Positive | Food | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato | 25 | Culinary
Potato dishes vary around the world. Peruvian cuisine naturally contains the potato as a primary ingredient in many dishes, as around 3,000 varieties of the tuber are grown there. Chuño is a freeze-dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Peru and Bolivia. In the UK, potatoes form part of the traditional dish fish and chips. Roast potatoes are commonly served as part of a Sunday roast dinner and mashed potatoes form a major component of several other traditional dishes, such as shepherd's pie, bubble and squeak, and bangers and mash. New potatoes may be cooked with mint and are often served with butter. In Germany, Northern (Finland, Latvia and especially Scandinavian countries), Eastern Europe (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) and Poland, newly harvested, early ripening varieties are considered a special delicacy. Boiled whole and served un-peeled with dill, these "new potatoes" are traditionally consumed with Baltic herring. Puddings made from grated potatoes (kugel, kugelis, and potato babka) are popular items of Ashkenazi, Lithuanian, and Belarusian cuisine. Cepelinai, the national dish of Lithuania, are dumplings made from boiled grated potatoes, usually stuffed with minced meat. In Italy, in the Friuli region, potatoes serve to make a type of pasta called gnocchi. Potato is used in northern China where rice is not easily grown, a popular dish being 青椒土豆丝 (qīng jiāo tǔ dòu sī), made with green pepper, vinegar and thin slices of potato. In the winter, roadside sellers in northern China sell roasted potatoes. |
synth_fc_2955_rep28 | No function call | School | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism | 3 | Order of acquisition
In sequential bilingualism, learners receive literacy instruction in their native language until they acquire a "threshold" literacy proficiency. Some researchers use age three as the age when a child has basic communicative competence in their first language (Kessler, 1984). Children may go through a process of sequential acquisition if they migrate at a young age to a country where a different language is spoken, or if the child exclusively speaks his or her heritage language at home until he or she is immersed in a school setting where instruction is offered in a different language.
In simultaneous bilingualism, the native language and the community language are simultaneously taught. The advantage is literacy in two languages as the outcome. However, the teacher must be well-versed in both languages and also in techniques for teaching a second language.
The phases children go through during sequential acquisition are less linear than for simultaneous acquisition and can vary greatly among children. Sequential acquisition is a more complex and lengthier process, although there is no indication that non-language-delayed children end up less proficient than simultaneous bilinguals, so long as they receive adequate input in both languages.
A coordinate model posits that equal time should be spent in separate instruction of the native language and the community language. The native language class, however, focuses on basic literacy while the community language class focuses on listening and speaking skills. Being bilingual does not necessarily mean that one can speak, for example, English and French. |
synth_fc_3558_rep10 | Negative | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna | 59 | Trains
The city forms the hub of the Austrian railway system, with services to all parts of the country and abroad. The railway system connects Vienna's main station Vienna Hauptbahnhof with other European cities, including Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Munich, Prague, Venice, Wrocław, Warsaw, Zagreb, and Zürich. Other train stations include: |
synth_fc_1725_rep7 | Positive | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_drug_use | 26 | Hallucinogens
Hallucinogens can be divided into three broad categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. They can cause subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness. Unlike other psychoactive drugs such as stimulants and opioids, hallucinogens do not merely amplify familiar states of mind but also induce experiences that differ from those of ordinary consciousness, often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as trance, meditation, conversion experiences, and dreams.
Psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants have a long worldwide history of use within medicinal and religious traditions. They are used in shamanic forms of ritual healing and divination, in initiation rites, and in the religious rituals of syncretistic movements such as União do Vegetal, Santo Daime, Temple of the True Inner Light, and the Native American Church. When used in religious practice, psychedelic drugs, as well as other substances like tobacco, are referred to as entheogens.
Hallucinogen-induced psychosis occurs when psychosis persists despite no longer being intoxicated with the drug. It is estimated that 26% of people with hallucinogen-induced psychosis will transition to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. This percentage is less than the psychosis transition rate for cannabis (34%) but higher than that of amphetamines (22%).
Starting in the mid-20th century, psychedelic drugs have been the object of extensive attention in the Western world. They have been and are being explored as potential therapeutic agents in treating depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, alcoholism, and opioid addiction. Yet the most popular, and at the same time most stigmatized, use of psychedelics in Western culture has been associated with the search for direct religious experience, enhanced creativity, personal development, and "mind expansion". The use of psychedelic drugs was a major element of the 1960s counterculture, where it became associated with various social movements and a general atmosphere of rebellion and strife between generations. |
synth_fc_1897_rep5 | Negative | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War | 8 | Penthesilea and the death of Achilles
Shortly after the burial of Hector, Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, arrived with her warriors. Penthesilea, daughter of Otrera and Ares, had accidentally killed her sister Hippolyte. She was purified from this action by Priam, and in exchange she fought for him and killed many, including Machaon (according to Pausanias, Machaon was killed by Eurypylus), and according to one version, Achilles himself, who was resurrected at the request of Thetis. In another version, Penthesilia was killed by Achilles, who would later mourn her after her death. Thersites, a simple soldier and the ugliest Achaean, taunted Achilles over his grief and gouged out Penthesilea's eyes. Achilles slew Thersites, and after a dispute sailed to Lesbos, where he was purified for his murder by Odysseus after sacrificing to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto.
While they were away, Memnon of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus and Eos, came with his host to help his stepbrother Priam. He did not come directly from Ethiopia, but either from Susa in Persia, conquering all the peoples in between, or from the Caucasus, leading an army of Ethiopians and Indians. Like Achilles, he wore armour made by Hephaestus. In the ensuing battle, Memnon killed Antilochus, who took one of Memnon's blows to save his father Nestor. Achilles and Memnon then fought. Zeus weighed the fate of the two heroes; the weight containing that of Memnon sank, and he was slain by Achilles. Achilles chased the Trojans to their city, which he entered. The gods, seeing that he had killed too many of their children, decided that it was his time to die. He was killed after Paris shot a poisoned arrow that was guided by Apollo. In another version he was killed by a knife to the back (or heel) by Paris, while marrying Polyxena, daughter of Priam, in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, the site where he had earlier killed Troilus. Both versions conspicuously deny the killer any sort of valour, saying Achilles remained undefeated on the battlefield. His bones were mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games were held. Like Ajax, Achilles is represented as living after his death in the island of Leuke, at the mouth of the Danube River. |
synth_fc_777_rep25 | Positive | Evolution modeling | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_luminosity | 1 | The Eddington luminosity, also referred to as the Eddington limit, is the maximum luminosity a body can achieve when there is balance between the force of radiation acting outward and the gravitational force acting inward. The state of balance is called hydrostatic equilibrium. When a star exceeds the Eddington luminosity, it will initiate a very intense radiation-driven stellar wind from its outer layers. Since most massive stars have luminosities far below the Eddington luminosity, their winds are driven mostly by the less intense line absorption. The Eddington limit is invoked to explain the observed luminosities of accreting black holes such as quasars. Originally, Sir Arthur Eddington took only the electron scattering into account when calculating this limit, something that now is called the classical Eddington limit. Nowadays, the modified Eddington limit also takes into account other radiation processes such as bound–free and free–free radiation interaction. |
synth_fc_2386_rep9 | Positive | Linguistics | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras | 16 | Languages
Spanish is the official, national language, spoken by virtually all Hondurans. In addition to Spanish, a number of indigenous languages are spoken in some small communities. Other languages spoken by some include Honduran sign language and Bay Islands Creole English.
The main indigenous languages are:
The Lenca isolate lost all its fluent native speakers in the 20th century but is currently undergoing revival efforts among the members of the ethnic population of about 100,000. The largest immigrant languages are Arabic (42,000), Armenian (1,300), Turkish (900), Yue Chinese (1,000). |
synth_fc_1424_rep19 | Positive | Food | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon | 9 | Glycogen and "the wall"
Carbohydrates that a person eats are converted by the liver and muscles into glycogen for storage. Glycogen burns rapidly to provide quick energy. Runners can store about 8 MJ or 2,000 kcal worth of glycogen in their bodies, enough for about 30 km/18–20 miles of running. Many runners report that running becomes noticeably more difficult at that point. When glycogen runs low, the body must then obtain energy by burning stored fat, which does not burn as readily. When this happens, the runner will experience dramatic fatigue and is said to " hit the wall ". The aim of training for the marathon, according to many coaches, is to maximize the limited glycogen available so that the fatigue of the "wall" is not as dramatic. This is accomplished in part by utilizing a higher percentage of energy from burned fat even during the early phase of the race, thus conserving glycogen.
Carbohydrate-based " energy gels " are used by runners to avoid or reduce the effect of "hitting the wall", as they provide easy to digest energy during the run. Energy gels usually contain varying amounts of sodium and potassium and some also contain caffeine. They need to be consumed with a certain amount of water. Recommendations for how often to take an energy gel during the race range widely.
Alternatives to gels include various forms of concentrated sugars, and foods high in simple carbohydrates that can be digested easily. Many runners experiment with consuming energy supplements during training runs to determine what works best for them. Consumption of food while running sometimes makes the runner sick. Runners are advised not to ingest a new food or medicine just prior to or during a race. It is also important to refrain from taking any of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory class of pain relievers (NSAIDs, e.g., aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen), as these drugs may change the way the kidneys regulate their blood flow and may lead to serious kidney problems, especially in cases involving moderate to severe dehydration. NSAIDS block the COX-2 enzyme pathway to prevent the production of prostaglandins. These prostaglandins may act as inflammation factors throughout the body, but they also play a crucial role in maintenance of water retention. In less than 5% of the whole population that take NSAIDS, individuals may be more negatively sensitive to renal prostaglandin synthesis inhibition. |
synth_fc_3760_rep10 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution | 17 | 20th and 21st century
The primitive conditions were intolerable for a world national capital, and the Imperial German government brought in its scientists, engineers, and urban planners to not only solve the deficiencies, but to forge Berlin as the world's model city. A British expert in 1906 concluded that Berlin represented "the most complete application of science, order and method of public life," adding "it is a marvel of civic administration, the most modern and most perfectly organized city that there is."
The emergence of great factories and consumption of immense quantities of coal gave rise to unprecedented air pollution and the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881. Pollution became a major issue in the United States in the early twentieth century, as progressive reformers took issue with air pollution caused by coal burning, water pollution caused by bad sanitation, and street pollution caused by the three million horses who worked in American cities in 1900, generating large quantities of urine and manure. As historian Martin Melosi notes, the generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as "miracles of cleanliness". By the 1940s, automobile-caused smog was a major issue in Los Angeles.
Other cities followed around the country until early in the 20th century, when the short lived Office of Air Pollution was created under the Department of the Interior. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania, in the late 1940s, serving as another public reminder.
Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of radioactive fallout from atomic warfare and testing. Then a non-nuclear event – the Great Smog of 1952 in London – killed at least 4000 people. This prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation: the Clean Air Act of 1956.
Pollution began to draw major public attention in the United States between the mid-1950s and early 1970s, when Congress passed the Noise Control Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Severe incidents of pollution helped increase consciousness. PCB dumping in the Hudson River resulted in a ban by the EPA on consumption of its fish in 1974. National news stories in the late 1970s – especially the long-term dioxin contamination at Love Canal starting in 1947 and uncontrolled dumping in Valley of the Drums – led to the Superfund legislation of 1980. The pollution of industrial land gave rise to the name brownfield, a term now common in city planning.
The development of nuclear science introduced radioactive contamination, which can remain lethally radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Lake Karachay – named by the Worldwatch Institute as the "most polluted spot" on earth – served as a disposal site for the Soviet Union throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chelyabinsk, Russia, is considered the "Most polluted place on the planet".
Nuclear weapons continued to be tested in the Cold War, especially in the earlier stages of their development. The toll on the worst-affected populations and the growth since then in understanding about the critical threat to human health posed by radioactivity has also been a prohibitive complication associated with nuclear power. Though extreme care is practiced in that industry, the potential for disaster suggested by incidents such as those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima pose a lingering specter of public mistrust. Worldwide publicity has been intense on those disasters. Widespread support for test ban treaties has ended almost all nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
International catastrophes such as the wreck of the Amoco Cadiz oil tanker off the coast of Brittany in 1978 and the Bhopal disaster in 1984 have demonstrated the universality of such events and the scale on which efforts to address them needed to engage. The borderless nature of atmosphere and oceans inevitably resulted in the implication of pollution on a planetary level with the issue of global warming. Most recently the term persistent organic pollutant (POP) has come to describe a group of chemicals such as PBDEs and PFCs among others. Though their effects remain somewhat less well understood owing to a lack of experimental data, they have been detected in various ecological habitats far removed from industrial activity such as the Arctic, demonstrating diffusion and bioaccumulation after only a relatively brief period of widespread use.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a concentration of plastics in the North Pacific Gyre. It and other garbage patches contain debris that can trsonport invasive species and that can entangle and be ingested by wildlife. Organizations such as 5 Gyres and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation have researched the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and found microplastics in the water.
Pollution introduced by light at night is becoming a global problem, more severe in urban centres, but nonetheless contaminating also large territories, far away from towns.
Growing evidence of local and global pollution and an increasingly informed public over time have given rise to environmentalism and the environmental movement, which generally seek to limit human impact on the environment. |
synth_fc_2981_rep7 | Positive | School | Database creation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_program | 2 | Example computer program
The "Hello, World!" program is used to illustrate a language's basic syntax. The syntax of the language BASIC (1964) was intentionally limited to make the language easy to learn. For example, variables are not declared before being used. Also, variables are automatically initialized to zero. Here is an example computer program, in Basic, to average a list of numbers:
Once the mechanics of basic computer programming are learned, more sophisticated and powerful languages are available to build large computer systems. |
synth_fc_2223_rep17 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook | 31 | 2015–2020: Algorithm revision; fake news
As of 2015, Facebook's algorithm was revised in an attempt to filter out false or misleading content, such as fake news stories and hoaxes. It relied on users who flag a story accordingly. Facebook maintained that satirical content should not be intercepted. The algorithm was accused of maintaining a " filter bubble ", where material the user disagrees with and posts with few likes would be deprioritized. In November, Facebook extended paternity leave from 4 weeks to 4 months.
On April 12, 2016, Zuckerberg outlined his 10-year vision, which rested on three main pillars: artificial intelligence, increased global connectivity, and virtual and augmented reality. In July, a US$1 billion suit was filed against the company alleging that it permitted Hamas to use it to perform assaults that cost the lives of four people. Facebook released its blueprints of Surround 360 camera on GitHub under an open-source license. In September, it won an Emmy for its animated short "Henry". In October, Facebook announced a fee-based communications tool called Workplace that aims to "connect everyone" at work. Users can create profiles, see updates from co-workers on their news feed, stream live videos and participate in secure group chats.
Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook announced that it would combat fake news by using fact checkers from sites like FactCheck.org and Associated Press (AP), making reporting hoaxes easier through crowdsourcing, and disrupting financial incentives for abusers.
On January 17, 2017, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg planned to open Station F, a startup incubator campus in Paris, France. On a six-month cycle, Facebook committed to work with ten to 15 data-driven startups there. On April 18, Facebook announced the beta launch of Facebook Spaces at its annual F8 developer conference. Facebook Spaces is a virtual reality version of Facebook for Oculus VR goggles. In a virtual and shared space, users can access a curated selection of 360-degree photos and videos using their avatar, with the support of the controller. Users can access their own photos and videos, along with media shared on their newsfeed. In September, Facebook announced it would spend up to US$1 billion on original shows for its Facebook Watch platform. On October 16, it acquired the anonymous compliment app tbh, announcing its intention to leave the app independent.
In October 2017, Facebook expanded its work with Definers Public Affairs, a PR firm that had originally been hired to monitor press coverage of the company to address concerns primarily regarding Russian meddling, then mishandling of user data by Cambridge Analytica, hate speech on Facebook, and calls for regulation. Company spokesman Tim Miller stated that a goal for tech firms should be to "have positive content pushed out about your company and negative content that's being pushed out about your competitor". Definers claimed that George Soros was the force behind what appeared to be a broad anti-Facebook movement, and created other negative media, along with America Rising, that was picked up by larger media organisations like Breitbart News. Facebook cut ties with the agency in late 2018, following public outcry over their association. Posts originating from the Facebook page of Breitbart News, a media organization previously affiliated with Cambridge Analytica, were among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
In May 2018 at F8, the company announced it would offer its own dating service. Shares in competitor Match Group fell by 22%. Facebook Dating includes privacy features and friends are unable to view their friends' dating profile. In July, Facebook was charged £500,000 by UK watchdogs for failing to respond to data erasure requests. On July 18, Facebook established a subsidiary named Lianshu Science & Technology in Hangzhou City, China, with $30 million ($ 36.4 million in 2023 dollars) of capital. All its shares are held by Facebook Hong. Approval of the registration of the subsidiary was then withdrawn, due to a disagreement between officials in Zhejiang province and the Cyberspace Administration of China. On July 26, Facebook became the first company to lose over $100 billion ($ 121 billion in 2023 dollars) worth of market capitalization in one day, dropping from nearly $630 billion to $510 billion after disappointing sales reports. On July 31, Facebook said that the company had deleted 17 accounts related to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. On September 19, Facebook announced that, for news distribution outside the United States, it would work with U.S. funded democracy promotion organizations, International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, which are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic parties. Through the Digital Forensic Research Lab Facebook partners with the Atlantic Council, a NATO -affiliated think tank. In November, Facebook launched smart displays branded Portal and Portal Plus (Portal+). They support Amazon 's Alexa (intelligent personal assistant service). The devices include video chat function with Facebook Messenger.
In August 2018, a lawsuit was filed in Oakland, California claiming that Facebook created fake accounts in order to inflate its user data and appeal to advertisers in the process.
In January 2019, the 10-year challenge was started asking users to post a photograph of themselves from 10 years ago (2009) and a more recent photo.
Criticized for its role in vaccine hesitancy, Facebook announced in March 2019 that it would provide users with "authoritative information" on the topic of vaccines. A study published in the journal Vaccine of advertisements posted in the three months prior to that found that 54% of the anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook were placed by just two organisations funded by well-known anti-vaccination activists. The Children's Health Defense / World Mercury Project chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Stop Mandatory Vaccination, run by campaigner Larry Cook, posted 54% of the advertisements. The ads often linked to commercial products, such as natural remedies and books.
On March 14, the Huffington Post reported that Facebook's PR agency had paid someone to tweak Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg 's Wikipedia page, as well as adding a page for the global head of PR, Caryn Marooney.
In March 2019, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand used Facebook to stream live footage of the attack as it unfolded. Facebook took 29 minutes to detect the livestreamed video, which was eight minutes longer than it took police to arrest the gunman. About 1.3m copies of the video were blocked from Facebook but 300,000 copies were published and shared. Facebook has promised changes to its platform; spokesman Simon Dilner told Radio New Zealand that it could have done a better job. Several companies, including the ANZ and ASB banks, have stopped advertising on Facebook after the company was widely condemned by the public. Following the attack, Facebook began blocking white nationalist, white supremacist, and white separatist content, saying that they could not be meaningfully separated. Previously, Facebook had only blocked overtly supremacist content. The older policy had been condemned by civil rights groups, who described these movements as functionally indistinct. Further bans were made in mid-April 2019, banning several British far-right organizations and associated individuals from Facebook, and also banning praise or support for them.
NTJ 's member Moulavi Zahran Hashim, a radical Islamist imam believed to be the mastermind behind the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, preached on a pro- ISIL Facebook account, known as "Al-Ghuraba" media.
On May 2, 2019, at F8, the company announced its new vision with the tagline "the future is private". A redesign of the website and mobile app was introduced, dubbed as "FB5". The event also featured plans for improving groups, a dating platform, end-to-end encryption on its platforms, and allowing users on Messenger to communicate directly with WhatsApp and Instagram users.
On July 31, 2019, Facebook announced a partnership with University of California, San Francisco to build a non-invasive, wearable device that lets people type by simply imagining themselves talking.
On August 13, 2019, it was revealed that Facebook had enlisted hundreds of contractors to create and obtain transcripts of the audio messages of users. This was especially common of Facebook Messenger, where the contractors frequently listened to and transcribed voice messages of users. After this was first reported on by Bloomberg News, Facebook released a statement confirming the report to be true, but also stated that the monitoring program was now suspended.
On September 5, 2019, Facebook launched Facebook Dating in the United States. This new application allows users to integrate their Instagram posts in their dating profile.
Facebook News, which features selected stories from news organizations, was launched on October 25. Facebook's decision to include far-right website Breitbart News as a "trusted source" was negatively received.
On November 17, 2019, the banking data for 29,000 Facebook employees was stolen from a payroll worker's car. The data was stored on unencrypted hard drives and included bank account numbers, employee names, the last four digits of their social security numbers, salaries, bonuses, and equity details. The company did not realize the hard drives were missing until November 20. Facebook confirmed that the drives contained employee information on November 29. Employees were not notified of the break-in until December 13, 2019.
On March 10, 2020, Facebook appointed two new directors Tracey Travis and Nancy Killefer to their board of members.
In June 2020, several major companies including Adidas, Aviva, Coca-Cola, Ford, HP, InterContinental Hotels Group, Mars, Starbucks, Target, and Unilever, announced they would pause adverts on Facebook for July in support of the Stop Hate For Profit campaign which claimed the company was not doing enough to remove hateful content. The BBC noted that this was unlikely to affect the company as most of Facebook's advertising revenue comes from small- to medium-sized businesses.
On August 14, 2020, Facebook started integrating the direct messaging service of Instagram with its own Messenger for both iOS and Android devices. After the update, an update screen is said to pop up on Instagram's mobile app with the following message, "There's a New Way to Message on Instagram" with a list of additional features. As part of the update, the regular DM icon on the top right corner of Instagram will be replaced by the Facebook Messenger logo.
On September 15, 2020, Facebook launched a climate science information centre to promote authoritative voices on climate change and provide access of "factual and up-to-date" information on climate science. It featured facts, figures and data from organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Met Office, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with relevant news posts.
After the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Facebook temporarily increased the weight of ecosystem quality in its news feed algorithm. |
synth_fc_2991_rep1 | Positive | School | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system | 1 | The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.
Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as "Japanese kanji" (和製漢字, wasei kanji), also known as " country's kanji" (国字, kokuji). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 jōyō kanji as of 2010. The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese.
In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each mora) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words. Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer visually obvious.
Texts without kanji are rare; most are either children's books—since children tend to know few kanji at an early age—or early electronics such as computers, phones, and video games, which could not display complex graphemes like kanji due to both graphical and computational limitations.
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses initialisms from the Latin alphabet, for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese is most frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered kana, and by native speakers for computer input. |
synth_fc_2978_rep18 | Positive | School | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BD_dynasty | 1 | The Lý dynasty, officially Đại Cồ Việt from 1009 to 1054 and Đại Việt(chữ Hán: 大越) from 1054 to 1225, was a Vietnamese dynasty that existed from 1009 to 1225. It was established by Lý Công Uẩn when he overthrew the Early Lê dynasty. The dynasty ended when empress regnant Lý Chiêu Hoàng was pressured to abdicate the throne in favor of her husband, Trần Cảnh in 1225, the dynasty lasts for 216 years. During Lý Thánh Tông's reign, the official name of the state was changed from Đại Cồ Việt to Đại Việt, a name that would remain Vietnam's official name until the onset of the 19th century. Domestically, while the Lý emperors were devout in their adherence to Buddhism, the influence of Confucianism from China was on the rise, with the opening of the Temple of Literature in 1070, built for the veneration of the Confucius and his disciples. Six years later in 1076, the Quốc Tử Giám (Guozijian) was established within the same complex; Initially the education was limited to the children of the emperor, the imperial family as well as mandarin and nobility, serving as Vietnam's first university institution. The first imperial examination was held in 1075 and Lê Văn Thịnh became the first Trạng Nguyên (Zhuangyuan) of Vietnam. Politically, the dynasty established an administration system based on the rule of law rather than on autocratic principles. They chose the Đại La Citadel as the capital. Ly Dynasty held onto power in part due to their economic strength, stability and general popularity among the population rather than by military means like previous dynasties. This set off a historical precedent for following dynasties, as prior to the Ly Dynasty, most Vietnamese dynasties lasted very briefly, often fall to the state of decline following the respective dynasty founder's death. Noblemen scholars such as Lê Văn Thịnh, Bùi Quốc Khái, Doãn Tử Tư, Đoàn Văn Khâm, Lý Đạo Thành, and Tô Hiến Thành made vast contributions culturally and politically, allowing the dynasty to flourish for 216 years. |
synth_fc_972_rep26 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chavo_del_Ocho | 1 | El Chavo; — also known as El Chavo del Ocho during its earliest episodes – is a Mexican television sitcom series created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños (Chespirito) and produced by Televisa. It premiered on February 26, 1973 and ended on January 7, 1980, after 8 seasons and 290 episodes, and aired across Latin America and Spain. The series theme song is a rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's Turkish March, rearranged by Jean-Jacques Perrey and retitled “The Elephant Never Forgets”. A poor orphan known as "El Chavo", played by the show's creator, Roberto Gómez Bolaños (Chespirito), is the main character of the series. It chronicles his adventures and tribulations, and those of his friends, frequently leading to comedic confrontations among the other residents of a fictional low-income housing complex, or "neighborhood," as it is known in Mexico. Chespirito, produced by Televisión Independiente de México (TIM), debuted El Chavo as a skit in 1971. Produced by Televisa, it began as a weekly half-hour series in 1973 after Telesistema Mexicano and TIM merged. The show continued until 1980 when it became a segment of Chespirito. Up until 1992, Chespirito exhibited shorts after that year. In the mid 1970s, the show was averaging 350 million Latin American viewers per episode, leading the cast to global tours and public performances. Chaves, a Brazilian Portuguese dub, has been broadcast by Brazilian TV Network SBT since 1984, and has been featured on Brazilian versions of Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Multishow, and in the United States it has aired on UniMás since May 2, 2011, following its previous airing on Univision and Spanish International Network. The series spawned an animated version titled El Chavo Animado, which aired from October 21, 2006 to June 6, 2014, just a few months before Bolaños' death. El Chavo continues to be popular with syndicated episodes averaging 91 million daily viewers in all of the markets where it is distributed in the Americas. Since it ceased production in 1992, it has earned an estimated US$1.7 billion in syndication fees alone for Televisa. El Chavo was also available on Netflix in the United States, but was removed on December 31, 2019. |
synth_fc_2907_rep24 | Negative | Restaurant | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich | 19 | Oktoberfest
At the Theresienwiese, the largest beer festival in the world, Munich's Oktoberfest runs for 16–18 days from the end of September through early October. In the last 200 years the festival has grown to span 85 acres and now welcomes over six million visitors every year. Beer is served from the six major Munich breweries. These are Augustiner-Bräu, Hacker-Pschorr Brewery, Löwenbräu Brewery, Paulaner Brewery, Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu, and Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München. Food must be bought in each tent. |
synth_fc_834_rep22 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium | 1 | Rhenium is a chemical element; it has symbol Re and atomic number 75. It is a silvery-gray, heavy, third-row transition metal in group 7 of the periodic table. With an estimated average concentration of 1 part per billion (ppb), rhenium is one of the rarest elements in the Earth's crust. It has the third-highest melting point and second-highest boiling point of any element at 5869 K. It resembles manganese and technetium chemically and is mainly obtained as a by-product of the extraction and refinement of molybdenum and copper ores. It shows in its compounds a wide variety of oxidation states ranging from −1 to +7.
Rhenium was originally discovered by Masataka Ogawa in 1908, but he mistakenly assigned it as element 43 rather than element 75 and named it nipponium. It was rediscovered by Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke and Otto Berg in 1925, who gave it its present name. It was named after the river Rhine in Europe, from which the earliest samples had been obtained and worked commercially.
Nickel -based superalloys of rhenium are used in combustion chambers, turbine blades, and exhaust nozzles of jet engines. These alloys contain up to 6% rhenium, making jet engine construction the largest single use for the element. The second-most important use is as a catalyst: it is an excellent catalyst for hydrogenation and isomerization, and is used for example in catalytic reforming of naphtha for use in gasoline (rheniforming process). Because of the low availability relative to demand, it is expensive, with price reaching an all-time high in 2008/2009 of US$10,600 per kilogram (US$4,800 per pound). Due to increases in recycling and a drop in demand for rhenium in catalysts, the price had dropped to US$2,844 per kilogram (US$1,290 per pound) as of July 2018. |
synth_fc_553_rep15 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_isomorphism_problem | 12 | Program checking
Manuel Blum and Sampath Kannan (1995) have shown a probabilistic checker for programs for graph isomorphism. Suppose P is a claimed polynomial-time procedure that checks if two graphs are isomorphic, but it is not trusted. To check if graphs G and H are isomorphic:
This procedure is polynomial-time and gives the correct answer if P is a correct program for graph isomorphism. If P is not a correct program, but answers correctly on G and H, the checker will either give the correct answer, or detect invalid behaviour of P.If P is not a correct program, and answers incorrectly on G and H, the checker will detect invalid behaviour of P with high probability, or answer wrong with probability 2.
Notably, P is used only as a blackbox. |
synth_fc_2111_rep17 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy | 47 | European Union
In 2016, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was intended to reduce the misuse of personal data and enhance individual privacy, by requiring companies to receive consent before acquiring personal information from users.
Although there are comprehensive regulations for data protection in the European Union, one study finds that despite the laws, there is a lack of enforcement in that no institution feels responsible to control the parties involved and enforce their laws. The European Union also champions the Right to be Forgotten concept in support of its adoption by other countries. |
synth_fc_1079_rep2 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea | 7 | Economy
Countries in the Caspian region, particularly Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, have high-value natural-resource-based economies, where the oil and gas compose more than 10 percent of their GDP and 40 percent of their exports. All the Caspian region economies are highly dependent on this type of mineral wealth. The world energy markets were influenced by Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as they became strategically crucial in this sphere, thus attracting the largest share of foreign direct investment (FDI).
All of the countries are rich in solar energy and harnessing potential, with the highest rainfall much less than the mountains of central Europe in the mountains of the west, which are also rich in hydroelectricity sources.
Iran has high fossil fuel energy potential. It has reserves of 137.5 billion barrels of crude oil, the fourth largest in the world, producing around four million barrels a day. Iran has an estimated 988.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, around 16 percent of world reserves, thus key to current paradigms in global energy security.
Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it the second leading producer of oil and natural gas globally.
Caspian littoral states join efforts to develop infrastructure, tourism and trade in the region. The first Caspian Economic Forum was convened on August 12, 2019, in Turkmenistan and brought together representatives of Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and that state. It hosted several meetings of their ministers of economy and transport.
The Caspian countries develop robust cooperation in the tech and digital field as part of the Caspian Digital Hub. The project helps expand data transmission capabilities in Kazakhstan as well as data transit capabilities between Asia and Europe. The project generated interest from investors from all over the world, including the UK. |
synth_fc_3139_rep12 | Positive | Sport | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Champions_League | 19 | Sponsorship
Like the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League is sponsored by a group of multinational corporations, in contrast to the single main sponsor typically found in national top-flight leagues. When the Champions League was created in 1992, it was decided that a maximum of eight companies should be allowed to sponsor the event, with each corporation being allocated four advertising boards around the perimeter of the pitch, as well as logo placement at pre- and post-match interviews and a certain number of tickets to each match. This, combined with a deal to ensure tournament sponsors were given priority on television advertisements during matches, ensured that each of the tournament's main sponsors was given maximum exposure.
From the 2012–13 knockout phase, UEFA used LED advertising hoardings installed in knock-out participant stadiums, including the final stage. From the 2015–16 season onwards, UEFA has used such hoardings from the play-off round until the final. Since 2021, the UEFA also used Virtual Board Replacement (VBR) technology to offer region-based advertising; regional sponsors are inserted into the hoardings as shown on the broadcast feed in specific regions along with the global sponsors.
Individual clubs may wear jerseys with advertising. However, only two sponsorships are permitted per jersey in addition to that of the kit manufacturer, at the chest and the left sleeve. Exceptions are made for non-profit organisations, which can feature on the front of the shirt, incorporated with the main sponsor or in place of it; or on the back, either below the squad number or on the collar area.
If a club plays a match in a nation where the relevant sponsorship category is restricted (such as France's alcohol advertising restriction), then they must remove that logo from their jerseys. For example, when Rangers played French side Auxerre in the 1996–97 Champions League, they wore the logo of the holiday chain Center Parcs instead of their primary sponsor, McEwan's Lager (both companies at the time were subsidiaries of Scottish & Newcastle). |
synth_fc_2784_rep17 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field | 20 | Numerical models
Simulating the geodynamo by computer requires numerically solving a set of nonlinear partial differential equations for the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of the Earth's interior. Simulation of the MHD equations is performed on a 3D grid of points and the fineness of the grid, which in part determines the realism of the solutions, is limited mainly by computer power. For decades, theorists were confined to creating kinematic dynamo computer models in which the fluid motion is chosen in advance and the effect on the magnetic field calculated. Kinematic dynamo theory was mainly a matter of trying different flow geometries and testing whether such geometries could sustain a dynamo.
The first self-consistent dynamo models, ones that determine both the fluid motions and the magnetic field, were developed by two groups in 1995, one in Japan and one in the United States. The latter received attention because it successfully reproduced some of the characteristics of the Earth's field, including geomagnetic reversals. |
synth_fc_1843_rep8 | Negative | History | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_digit | 9 | History of modern numbers
In China, armies and provisions were counted using modular tallies of prime numbers. Unique numbers of troops and measures of rice appear as unique combinations of these tallies. A great convenience of modular arithmetic is that it is easy to multiply. This makes use of modular arithmetic for provisions especially attractive. Conventional tallies are quite difficult to multiply and divide. In modern times modular arithmetic is sometimes used in digital signal processing.
The oldest Greek system was that of the Attic numerals, but in the 4th century BC they began to use a quasidecimal alphabetic system (see Greek numerals). Jews began using a similar system (Hebrew numerals), with the oldest examples known being coins from around 100 BC.
The Roman empire used tallies written on wax, papyrus and stone, and roughly followed the Greek custom of assigning letters to various numbers. The Roman numerals system remained in common use in Europe until positional notation came into common use in the 16th century.
The Maya of Central America used a mixed base 18 and base 20 system, possibly inherited from the Olmec, including advanced features such as positional notation and a zero. They used this system to make advanced astronomical calculations, including highly accurate calculations of the length of the solar year and the orbit of Venus.
The Incan Empire ran a large command economy using quipu, tallies made by knotting colored fibers. Knowledge of the encodings of the knots and colors was suppressed by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, and has not survived although simple quipu-like recording devices are still used in the Andean region.
Some authorities believe that positional arithmetic began with the wide use of counting rods in China. The earliest written positional records seem to be rod calculus results in China around 400. Zero was first used in India in the 7th century CE by Brahmagupta.
The modern positional Arabic numeral system was developed by mathematicians in India, and passed on to Muslim mathematicians, along with astronomical tables brought to Baghdad by an Indian ambassador around 773.
From India, the thriving trade between Islamic sultans and Africa carried the concept to Cairo. Arabic mathematicians extended the system to include decimal fractions, and Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḵwārizmī wrote an important work about it in the 9th century. The modern Arabic numerals were introduced to Europe with the translation of this work in the 12th century in Spain and Leonardo of Pisa 's Liber Abaci of 1201. In Europe, the complete Indian system with the zero was derived from the Arabs in the 12th century.
The binary system (base 2) was propagated in the 17th century by Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz had developed the concept early in his career, and had revisited it when he reviewed a copy of the I Ching from China. Binary numbers came into common use in the 20th century because of computer applications. |
synth_fc_2164_rep13 | No function call | Law | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality | 18 | Turkey
In Turkey, founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is commemorated by a myriad of memorials throughout the country, such as the Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul, the Atatürk Bridge over the Golden Horn (Haliç), the Atatürk Dam, and Atatürk Stadium. His titles include Great Leader (Ulu Önder), Eternal Commander (Ebedî Başkomutan), Head Teacher (Başöğretmen), and Eternal Chief (Ebedî Şef). Atatürk statues have been erected in all Turkish cities by the Turkish Government, and most towns have their own memorial to him. His face and name are seen and heard everywhere in Turkey; his portrait can be seen in all public buildings, in all schools and classrooms, on all school textbooks, on all Turkish lira banknotes, and in the homes of many Turkish families.
At the exact time of Atatürk's death, on every November 10, at 09:05, most vehicles and people in the country's streets pause for one minute in remembrance. In 1951, the Turkish Parliament issued a law (5816) outlawing insults to his reminiscence (Turkish: hatırasına alenen hakaret) or destruction of objects representing him, which is still in force. There is a government website that is aimed at denouncing different kinds of crimes found on the internet, including with the 8th element crimes committed against Atatürk (Turkish: Atatürk aleyhine işlenen suçlar). Turkish government as of 2011 has filters in place to block websites deemed to contain materials insulting to his memory.
The start of Atatürk's cult of personality is placed in the 1920s when the first statues started being built. The idea of Atatürk as the "father of the Turks" is ingrained in Turkish politics and politicians in that country are evaluated in relation to his cult of personality. The persistence of the phenomenon of Atatürk's personality cult has become an area of deep interest to scholars.
Atatürk impersonators are also seen around Turkey much after Atatürk's death to preserve what is called the "world's longest-running personality cult".
Ottoman sultans Mehmed the Conqueror and Abdul Hamid II have cults of personality created by religious conservatives and Islamists. They associate the policies of these statesmen with their "piety".
In recent years there has been a growing cult of personality in modern Turkey around current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. |
synth_fc_214_rep25 | Positive | Biology | Database creation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern | 5 | Pteridology
The study of ferns and other pteridophytes is called pteridology. A pteridologist is a specialist in the study of pteridophytes in a broader sense that includes the more distantly related lycophytes. |
synth_fc_1723_rep9 | Positive | Health | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli | 6 | Death
Pauli died of pancreatic cancer on December 15, 1958, at age 58. |
synth_fc_2064_rep16 | Positive | Hotel | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_center | 1 | A convention center is a large building that is designed to hold a convention, where individuals and groups gather to promote and share common interests. Convention centers typically offer sufficient floor area to accommodate several thousand attendees. Very large venues, suitable for major trade shows, are sometimes known as exhibition halls. Convention centers typically have at least one auditorium and may also contain concert halls, lecture halls, meeting rooms, and conference rooms. Some large resort area hotels include a convention center. In Francophone countries, the term is palais des congrès or centre des congrès. |
synth_fc_522_rep16 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database creation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight | 9 | Safety
All launch vehicles contain a huge amount of energy that is needed for some part of it to reach orbit. There is therefore some risk that this energy can be released prematurely and suddenly, with significant effects. When a Delta II rocket exploded 13 seconds after launch on January 17, 1997, there were reports of store windows 10 miles (16 km) away being broken by the blast.
Space is a fairly predictable environment, but there are still risks of accidental depressurization and the potential failure of equipment, some of which may be very newly developed.
In April 2004 the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety was established in the Netherlands to further international cooperation and scientific advancement in space systems safety. |
synth_fc_1036_rep30 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card | 14 | Interchange fee
In addition to fees paid by the card holder, merchants must also pay interchange fees to the card-issuing bank and the card association. For a typical credit card issuer, interchange fee revenues may represent about a quarter of total revenues.
These fees are typically from 1 to 6 percent of each sale but will vary not only from merchant to merchant (large merchants can negotiate lower rates), but also from card to card, with business cards and rewards cards generally costing the merchants more to process. The interchange fee that applies to a particular transaction is also affected by many other variables including the type of merchant, the merchant's total card sales volume, the merchant's average transaction amount, whether the cards were physically present, how the information required for the transaction was received, the specific type of card, when the transaction was settled, and the authorized and settled transaction amounts. In some cases, merchants add a surcharge to the credit cards to cover the interchange fee, encouraging their customers to instead use cash, debit cards, or even cheques.
The 2022-proposed change in Interchange fees, by encouraging use of multiple card networks was criticized as likely to reduce fraud detection. |
synth_fc_3521_rep18 | No function call | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing | 57 | Bicycles
Beijing has long been well known for the number of bicycles on its streets. Although the rise of motor traffic has created a great deal of congestion and bicycle use has declined, bicycles are still an important form of local transportation. Many cyclists can be seen on most roads in the city, and most of the main roads have dedicated bicycle lanes. Beijing is relatively flat, which makes cycling convenient. The rise of electric bicycles and electric scooters, which have similar speeds and use the same cycle lanes, may have brought about a revival in bicycle-speed two-wheeled transport. It is possible to cycle to most parts of the city. Because of the growing traffic congestion, the authorities have indicated more than once that they wish to encourage cycling, but it is not clear whether there is sufficient will to translate that into action on a significant scale. On 30 March 2019, a 6.5 km (4 mile) bicycle-dedicated lane was opened, easing the traffic congestion between Huilongguan and Shangdi where there are many high-tech companies. Cycling has seen a resurgence in popularity spurred by the emergence of a large number of dockless app based bikeshares such as Mobike, Bluegogo and Ofo since 2016. |
synth_fc_3368_rep29 | Negative | Store & Facility | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park | 12 | Sub-national parks
In some Federal systems, many parks are managed by the sub-national levels of government. In Brazil, the United States, and some states in Mexico, as well as in the Australian state of Victoria, these are known as state parks, whereas in Argentina, Canada and South Korea, they are known as provincial or territorial parks. In the United States, it is also common for individual counties to run parks, these are known as county parks. |
synth_fc_176_rep8 | Negative | Biology | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinellidae | 7 | Description
Coccinellids range in size from 0.8 to 18 mm (0.03–0.7 in). They are sexually dimorphic; adult females tend to be slightly larger than males. They are generally oval with domed backs and flattened undersides. They have large compound eyes and clubbed antennae with seven to eleven segments. The powerful mandibles (equivalent to jaws) typically have pairs of "teeth" which face each other. The coccinellid prothorax (front of thorax) is broad and convex, and can cover the back of the head. Being beetles, they have hardened, non-overlapping forewings, known as elytra, which cover up the more fragile hindwings when the insects are not in flight. Their legs are relatively short, with a tarsal formula of 4-4-4 or 3-3-3. The tarsus (end of leg) has two claws at the tip.
As adults, these beetles differ from their closest relatives with the following morphological characteristics:
Coccinellids are often distinctively coloured and patterned. The elytron may be light with dark spots or dark with light spots. Light areas are typically yellow, red, orange or brown, and the spots vary in size and shape and numbers. Some species have striped or checkered patterns. The pigment carotene creates the lighter colours, and melanins create darker colours. Other parts of the body also vary in colouration. These colour patterns typically serve as warning colouration, but some can act as camouflage, attract mates or even regulate heat. Several individual species may display polymorphism and even change colour between seasons.
Coccinellid larvae are elongated with square heads. They are covered in hairs or setae, the abdominal segments, in particular, each having six divided into pairs, and one to three segmented antennae. Their colouration varies from grey, blue-grey, grey-brown or brown and spotted with white, yellow, red or orange. They tend to brighten as they get closer to adulthood. |
synth_fc_1006_rep16 | Positive | Finance | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal | 25 | Third set of locks project (expansion)
As demand is rising for efficient global shipping of goods, the canal is positioned to be a significant feature of world shipping for the foreseeable future. However, changes in shipping patterns—particularly the increasing numbers of larger-than-Panamax ships—necessitated changes to the canal for it to retain a significant market share. In 2006 it was anticipated that by 2011, 37 percent of the world's container ships would be too large for the present canal, and hence a failure to expand would result in a significant loss of market share. The maximum sustainable capacity of the original canal, given some relatively minor improvement work, was estimated at 340 million PC/UMS tons per year; it was anticipated that this capacity would be reached between 2009 and 2012. Close to 50 percent of transiting vessels were already using the full width of the locks.
An enlargement scheme to allow for a greater number of transits and the ability to handle larger ships, similar to the Third Lock Scheme of 1939, had been under consideration for some time, and by 2006 Panama's government canal authority was recommending such a plan. The expansion proposal, with a cost estimate of US$5.25 billion, was expected to double the canal's shipping capacity by allowing both the passage of longer and wider Post-Panamax ships and an increase in overall traffic. This proposal was approved in a national referendum by about 80 percent on 22 October 2006. The canal expansion was built between 2007 and 2016.
The expansion plan had two new flights of locks built parallel to, and operated in addition to, the old locks: one east of the existing Gatun locks, and one southwest of the Miraflores locks, each supported by approach channels. Each flight ascends from sea level directly to the level of Gatun Lake; the existing two-stage ascent at Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locks was not replicated. The new lock chambers feature sliding gates, doubled for safety, and are 427 m (1,400 ft) long, 55 m (180 ft) wide, and 18.3 m (60 ft) deep. This allows the transit of vessels with a beam of up to 49 m (160 ft), an overall length of up to 366 m (1,200 ft) and a draft of up to 15 m (49 ft), equivalent to a container ship carrying around 12,000 containers, each 6.1 m (20 ft) in length (TEU).
The new locks are supported by new approach channels, including a 6.2 km (3.9 mi) channel at Miraflores from the locks to the Gaillard Cut, skirting Miraflores Lake. Each of these channels are 218 m (720 ft) wide, which will require post-Panamax vessels to navigate the channels in one direction at a time. The Gaillard Cut and the channel through Gatun Lake were widened to at least 280 m (920 ft) on the straight portions and at least 366 m (1,200 ft) on the bends. The maximum level of Gatun Lake was raised from 26.7 to 27.1 m (88 to 89 ft).
Each flight of locks is accompanied by nine water reuse basins (three per lock chamber), each basin being about 70 m (230 ft) wide, 430 m (1,400 ft) long and 5.50 m (18 ft) deep. These gravity-fed basins allow 60 percent of the water used in each transit to be reused; the new locks consequently use 7 percent less water per transit than each of the existing lock lanes. The deepening of Gatun Lake and the raising of its maximum water level also provide capacity for significantly more water storage. These measures are intended to allow the expanded canal to operate without constructing new reservoirs.
The estimated cost of the project is US$5.25 billion. The project was designed to allow for an anticipated growth in traffic from 280 million PC/UMS tons in 2005 to nearly 510 million PC/UMS tons in 2025. The expanded canal will have a maximum sustainable capacity of about 600 million PC/UMS tons per year. Tolls will continue to be calculated based on vessel tonnage, and in some cases depend on the locks used.
An article in the February 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine described the engineering aspects of the expansion project. There is also a follow-up article in the February 2010 issue of Popular Mechanics.
On 3 September 2007, thousands of Panamanians stood across from Paraíso Hill in Panama to witness a huge initial explosion and launch of the Expansion Program. The first phase of the project was the dry excavations of the 218 meters (715 feet) wide trench connecting the Gaillard Cut with the Pacific coast, removing 47 million cubic meters of earth and rock. By June 2012, a 30 m reinforced concrete monolith had been completed, the first of 46 such monoliths which will line the new Pacific-side lock walls. By early July 2012, however, it was announced that the canal expansion project had fallen six months behind schedule, leading expectations for the expansion to open in April 2015 rather than October 2014, as originally planned. By September 2014, the new gates were projected to be open for transit at the "beginning of 2016".
It was announced in July 2009 that the Belgian dredging company Jan De Nul, together with a consortium of contractors consisting of the Spanish Sacyr Vallehermoso, the Italian Impregilo, and the Panamanian company Grupo Cusa, had been awarded the contract to build the six new locks for US$3.1 billion, which was one billion less than the next highest competing bid due to having a concrete budget 71 percent smaller than that of the next bidder and allotted roughly 25 percent less for steel to reinforce that concrete. The contract resulted in $100 million in dredging works over the next few years for the Belgian company and a great deal of work for its construction division. The design of the locks is a carbon copy of the Berendrecht Lock, which is 68 m wide and 500 m long, making it the second largest lock in the world after the Kieldrecht lock in the port of Antwerp, Belgium. Completed in 1989 by the Port of Antwerp, which De Nul helped build, the company still has engineers and specialists who were part of that project.
In January 2014, a contract dispute threatened the progress of the project. There was a delay of less than two months however, with work by the consortium members reaching goals by June 2014.
In June 2015, flooding of the new locks began: first on the Atlantic side, then on the Pacific; by then, the canal's re-inauguration was slated for April 2016. On 23 March 2016, the expansion inauguration was set for 26 June 2016.
The new locks opened for commercial traffic on 26 June 2016, and the first ship to cross the canal using the third set of locks was a modern Neopanamax vessel, the Chinese-owned container ship Cosco Shipping Panama. The original locks, now over 100 years old, allow engineers greater access for maintenance, and are projected to continue operating indefinitely. After the construction of the new locks, in addition to the already existing ones, to date the ship with the largest dimensions transiting the "Panama Canal new sideway", had the following dimensions: 366.47 meters in length, 48.23 meters in width and 15 meters draft.
The total cost is unknown since the expansion's contractors are seeking at least an additional US$3.4 billion from the canal authority due to excess expenses. |
synth_fc_2963_rep1 | Positive | School | Database removal | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia | 8 | Education
The right to equal and adequate education for all is enshrined within the Zambian constitution. The Education Act of 2011 regulates equal and quality education. The Ministry of General Education effectively oversees the provision of quality education through policy and regulation of the education curriculum.
Fundamentally, the aim of education in Zambia is to promote the full and well-rounded development of the physical, intellectual, social, affective, moral, and spiritual qualities of all learners. The education system has three core structures: Early childhood education and primary education (Grades 1–7), secondary education (Grades 8–12), and tertiary education. Adult-literacy programs are available for semi-literate and illiterate individuals.
The government's annual expenditure on education has varied significantly over the years, from 19.6% in 2006, to 15.3% in 2011, to 20.2% in 2015. |
synth_fc_847_rep17 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick | 18 | Period and horror filming (1972–1980)
Barry Lyndon (1975) is an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray 's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a picaresque novel about the adventures of an 18th-century Irish rogue and social climber. John Calley of Warner Bros. agreed in 1972 to invest $2.5 million into the film, on condition that Kubrick approach major Hollywood stars, to ensure success. Like previous films, Kubrick and his art department conducted an enormous amount of research on the 18th century. Extensive photographs were taken of locations and artwork in particular, and paintings were meticulously replicated from works of the great masters of the period in the film. The film was shot on location in Ireland, beginning in the autumn of 1973, at a cost of $11 million with a cast and crew of 170. The decision to shoot in Ireland stemmed from the fact that it still retained many buildings from the 18th century period which England lacked. The production was problematic from the start, plagued with heavy rain and political strife involving Northern Ireland at the time. After Kubrick received death threats from the IRA in 1974 due to the shooting scenes with English soldiers, he fled Ireland with his family on a ferry from Dún Laoghaire under an assumed identity and resumed filming in England.
Baxter notes that Barry Lyndon was the film which made Kubrick notorious for paying scrupulous attention to detail, often demanding twenty or thirty retakes of the same scene to perfect his art. Often considered to be his most authentic-looking picture, the cinematography and lighting techniques that Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott used in Barry Lyndon were highly innovative. Interior scenes were shot with a specially adapted high-speed f/0.7 Zeiss camera lens originally developed for NASA to be used in satellite photography. The lenses allowed many scenes to be lit only with candlelight, creating two-dimensional, diffused-light images reminiscent of 18th-century paintings. Cinematographer Allen Daviau states that the method gives the audience a way of seeing the characters and scenes as they would have been seen by people at the time. Many of the fight scenes were shot with a hand-held camera to produce a "sense of documentary realism and immediacy".
Barry Lyndon found a great audience in France, but was a box office failure, grossing just $9.5 million in the American market, not even close to the $30 million Warner Bros. needed to generate a profit. The pace and length of Barry Lyndon at three hours put off many American critics and audiences, but the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Musical Score, more than any other Kubrick film. As with most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon' s reputation has grown through the years and it is now considered to be one of his best, particularly among filmmakers and critics. Numerous polls, such as The Village Voice (1999), Sight & Sound (2002), and Time (2005), have rated it as one of the greatest films ever made. As of March 2019, it has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 64 reviews. Roger Ebert referred to it as "one of the most beautiful films ever made... certainly in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness".
The Shining, released in 1980, was adapted from the novel of the same name by bestselling horror writer Stephen King. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a writer who takes a job as a winter caretaker of an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains. He spends the winter there with his wife, played by Shelley Duvall, and their young son, who displays paranormal abilities. During their stay, they confront both Jack's descent into madness and apparent supernatural horrors lurking in the hotel. Kubrick gave his actors freedom to extend the script and even improvise on occasion, and as a result, Nicholson was responsible for the 'Here's Johnny!' line and the scene in which he's sitting at the typewriter and unleashes his anger upon his wife. Kubrick often demanded up to 70 or 80 retakes of the same scene. Duvall, whom Kubrick intentionally isolated and argued with, was forced to perform the exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. The bar scene with the ghostly bartender was shot 36 times, while the kitchen scene between the characters of Danny (Danny Lloyd) and Halloran (Scatman Crothers) ran to 148 takes. The aerial shots of the Overlook Hotel were shot at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon, while the interiors of the hotel were shot at Elstree Studios in England between May 1978 and April 1979. Cardboard models were made of all of the sets of the film, and the lighting of them was a massive undertaking, which took four months of electrical wiring. Kubrick made extensive use of the newly invented Steadicam, a weight-balanced camera support, which allowed for smooth hand-held camera movement in scenes where a conventional camera track was impractical. According to Garrett Brown, Steadicam's inventor, it was the first picture to use its full potential. The Shining was not the only horror film to which Kubrick had been linked; he had turned down the directing of both The Exorcist (1973) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), despite once saying in 1966 to a friend that he had long desired to "make the world's scariest movie, involving a series of episodes that would play upon the nightmare fears of the audience".
Five days after release on May 23, 1980, Kubrick ordered the deletion of a final scene, in which the hotel manager Ullman (Barry Nelson) visits Wendy (Shelley Duvall) in hospital, believing it unnecessary after witnessing the audience excitement in cinemas at the film's climax. The Shining opened to strong box office takings, earning $1 million on the first weekend and earning $30.9 million in America by the end of the year. The original critical response was mixed, and King detested the film and disliked Kubrick. The Shining is now considered to be a horror classic, and the American Film Institute ranked it as the 29th greatest thriller film of all time in 2001. |
synth_fc_1745_rep16 | Positive | Health | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erbium | 7 | Physical properties
A trivalent element, pure erbium metal is malleable (or easily shaped), soft yet stable in air, and does not oxidize as quickly as some other rare-earth metals. Its salts are rose-colored, and the element has characteristic sharp absorption spectra bands in visible light, ultraviolet, and near infrared. Otherwise it looks much like the other rare earths. Its sesquioxide is called erbia. Erbium's properties are to a degree dictated by the kind and amount of impurities present. Erbium does not play any known biological role, but is thought to be able to stimulate metabolism.
Erbium is ferromagnetic below 19 K, antiferromagnetic between 19 and 80 K and paramagnetic above 80 K.
Erbium can form propeller-shaped atomic clusters Er N, where the distance between the erbium atoms is 0.35 nm. Those clusters can be isolated by encapsulating them into fullerene molecules, as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy.
Like most rare-earth elements, erbium is usually found in the +3 oxidation state. However, it is possible for erbium to also be found in the 0, +1 and +2 oxidation states. |
synth_fc_1162_rep26 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce | 11 | China
Among emerging economies, China's e-commerce presence continues to expand every year. With 668 million Internet users as of 2014, China's online shopping sales reached $253 billion in the first half of 2015, accounting for 10% of total Chinese consumer retail sales in that period. The Chinese retailers have been able to help consumers feel more comfortable shopping online. e-commerce transactions between China and other countries increased 32% to 2.3 trillion yuan ($375.8 billion) in 2012 and accounted for 9.6% of China's total international trade. In 2013, Alibaba had an e-commerce market share of 80% in China. In 2014, Alibaba still dominated the B2B marketplace in China with a market share of 44.82%, followed by several other companies including Made-in-China.com at 3.21%, and GlobalSources.com at 2.98%, with the total transaction value of China's B2B market exceeding 4.5 billion yuan.
China is also the largest e-commerce market in the world by value of sales, with an estimated US$899 billion in 2016. It accounted for 42.4% of worldwide retail e-commerce in that year, the most of any country. Research shows that Chinese consumer motivations are different enough from Western audiences to require unique e-commerce app designs instead of simply porting Western apps into the Chinese market.
The expansion of e-commerce in China has resulted in the development of Taobao villages, clusters of e-commerce businesses operating in rural areas. Because Taobao villages have increased the incomes or rural people and entrepreneurship in rural China, Taobao villages have become a component of rural revitalization strategies.
In 2015, the State Council promoted the Internet Plus initiative, a five-year plan to integrate traditional manufacturing and service industries with big data, cloud computing, and Internet of things technology. The State Council provided support for Internet Plus through policy support in area including cross-border e-commerce and rural e-commerce.
In 2019, the city of Hangzhou established a pilot program artificial intelligence-based Internet Court to adjudicate disputes related to e-commerce and internet-related intellectual property claims. |
synth_fc_2649_rep21 | Positive | Music | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glee_(TV_series) | 1 | Glee is an American jukebox musical comedy drama television series that aired on Fox in the United States from May 19, 2009, to March 20, 2015. It centers on the New Directions, a glee club at the fictional William McKinley High School, that is located in the American state of Ohio. The club competes as a show choir while its disparate members deal with social issues, especially regarding sexuality, race, family, teen relationships and teamwork. The initial twelve-member main cast included Matthew Morrison as teacher Will Schuester, Jane Lynch as scheming cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, Jayma Mays as guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury, Jessalyn Gilsig as Will's wife, Terri Schuester. Other main cast members played students, with Dianna Agron as Quinn Fabray, a popular cheerleader who experiences a teenage pregnancy; Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel, an effeminate, openly gay boy; Kevin McHale as Artie Abrams, a boy with a physical disability; Lea Michele as Rachel Berry, an ambitious performer driven by her dreams of becoming a Broadway theatre star; Cory Monteith as Finn Hudson, the school's sometimes-slow-witted star quarterback; Amber Riley as Mercedes Jones, an aspiring vocal diva who endeavors to be recognized for her talents; Mark Salling as Noah Puckerman, a teenage delinquent in need of direction; and Jenna Ushkowitz as Tina Cohen-Chang, a shy goth who longs to be popular. The main cast was altered throughout the series, including the addition of Naya Rivera as Santana Lopez, a sardonic and cynical cheerleader struggling with her sexuality, Harry Shum Jr. as Mike Chang, a soft-spoken dancer whose parents do not support his dreams, and Heather Morris as Brittany Pierce, a ditzy cheerleader who is secretly a math prodigy. The series was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, the latter of whom first conceived of Glee as a film. The three wrote all of the show's episodes for the first two seasons, and Murphy and Falchuk initially served as the show's main directors. The pilot episode was broadcast on May 19, 2009, and the first season aired from September 9, 2009, to June 8, 2010. Subsequent seasons aired from September through May. The sixth and final season aired from January to March 2015. Glee features on-screen performance-based musical numbers that were selected by Murphy, who aimed to maintain a balance between show tunes and chart hits, and were produced by Adam Anders and Peer Åström. Songs covered in the show were released through the iTunes Store during the week of broadcast, and a series of Glee albums have been released by Columbia Records. The music of Glee has been a commercial success, with over 36 million digital single sales and eleven million album sales worldwide through October 2011. The series' merchandise also includes DVD and Blu-ray releases, an iPad application, and karaoke games for the Wii home videogame console. There were live concert tours by the show's cast after the first and second seasons completed shooting; a concert film based on the 2011 tour, and Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, which was produced by Murphy and Fox and directed by Kevin Tancharoen. During its first season, Glee received generally favorable reviews from critics, with Metacritic's weighted average of 77 out of 100 based on 18 critical reviews. Glee has won many accolades. The season was nominated for 19 Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, six Satellite Awards and 57 other awards, with wins including the 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, and Emmy awards for Jane Lynch, guest-star Neil Patrick Harris and Murphy's direction of the pilot episode. In 2011, the show once again won the Golden Globe for Best Television Series, and Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer won Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor respectively, and Gwyneth Paltrow won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. The show was also chosen by Fox to fill the coveted time slot that followed the network's coverage of Super Bowl XLV in 2011. In 2013, in the wake of Cory Monteith's death and after his tribute episode "The Quarterback" aired, Murphy announced that the sixth season would be the series' last. After 121 episodes and over 729 music performances, Glee concluded on March 20, 2015. |
synth_fc_2765_rep19 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose | 1 | The angle of repose, or critical angle of repose, of a granular material is the steepest angle of descent or dip relative to the horizontal plane on which the material can be piled without slumping. At this angle, the material on the slope face is on the verge of sliding. The angle of repose can range from 0° to 90°. The morphology of the material affects the angle of repose; smooth, rounded sand grains cannot be piled as steeply as can rough, interlocking sands. The angle of repose can also be affected by additions of solvents. If a small amount of water is able to bridge the gaps between particles, electrostatic attraction of the water to mineral surfaces increases the angle of repose, and related quantities such as the soil strength. When bulk granular materials are poured onto a horizontal surface, a conical pile forms. The internal angle between the surface of the pile and the horizontal surface is known as the angle of repose and is related to the density, surface area and shapes of the particles, and the coefficient of friction of the material. Material with a low angle of repose forms flatter piles than material with a high angle of repose. The term has a related usage in mechanics, where it refers to the maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane without sliding down. This angle is equal to the arctangent of the coefficient of static friction μs between the surfaces. |
synth_fc_2458_rep11 | Positive | Movie | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy | 47 | In fiction
Characters with psychopathy or sociopathy are some of the most notorious characters in film and literature, but their characterizations may only vaguely or partly relate to the concept of psychopathy as it is defined in psychiatry, criminology, and research. The character may be identified as having psychopathy within the fictional work itself, by its creators, or from the opinions of audiences and critics, and may be based on undefined popular stereotypes of psychopathy. Characters with psychopathic traits have appeared in Greek and Roman mythology, Bible stories, and some of Shakespeare 's works.
Such characters are often portrayed in an exaggerated fashion and typically in the role of a villain or antihero, where the general characteristics and stereotypes associated with psychopathy are useful to facilitate conflict and danger. Because the definitions, criteria, and popular conceptions throughout its history have varied over the years and continue to change even now, many of the characters characterized as psychopathic in notable works at the time of publication may no longer fit the current definition and conception of psychopathy. There are several archetypal images of psychopathy in both lay and professional accounts which only partly overlap and can involve contradictory traits: the charming con artist, the deranged serial killer and mass murderer, the callous and scheming businessperson, and the chronic low-level offender and juvenile delinquent. The public concept reflects some combination of fear of a mythical bogeyman, the disgust and intrigue surrounding evil, and fascination and sometimes perhaps envy of people who might appear to go through life without attachments and unencumbered by guilt, anguish or insecurity. |
synth_fc_82_rep22 | No function call | Astronomy | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight | 11 | Weightlessness
In a microgravity environment such as that provided by a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, humans experience a sense of "weightlessness." Short-term exposure to microgravity causes space adaptation syndrome, a self-limiting nausea caused by derangement of the vestibular system. Long-term exposure causes multiple health issues. The most significant is bone loss, some of which is permanent, but microgravity also leads to significant deconditioning of muscular and cardiovascular tissues. |
synth_fc_1993_rep9 | Negative | History | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_East | 20 | 1920–1945
During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. In 1919, Egypt's Saad Zaghloul orchestrated mass demonstrations in Egypt known as the First Revolution. While Zaghloul would later become Prime Minister, the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to around 800 deaths. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.
Although the Kingdom of Egypt was technically "neutral" during World War II, Cairo soon became a major military base for the British and the country was occupied. The British cited the 1936 treaty that allowed it to station troops on Egyptian soil to protect the Suez Canal. In 1941, the Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup in Iraq led to the British to invade, leading to the Anglo-Iraqi War. This was followed by the Allied invasion of Syria–Lebanon and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.
In Palestine, conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. The rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler had created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to immigrate to Palestine and create a Jewish state. A Palestinian state was also an attractive alternative to the Arab and Persian leaders, instead of the de facto British, French, and perceived Jewish colonialism or imperialism, under the logic of " the enemy of my enemy is my friend ". |
synth_fc_54_rep3 | Negative | Architecture | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace | 12 | Ancient palaces
Early ancient palaces include the Assyrian palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh and the Persian palaces at Persepolis and Susa. The Minoans built complexes referred to in modern times as Minoan palaces, though scholars do not think they functioned as royal residences.
The best examples of the Bronze Age Greece palace are seen in the excavations at Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos. The fact that these were administrative centers is shown by the records found there. They were ranged around a group of courtyards, each opening upon several rooms of different dimensions, such as storerooms and workshops, as well as reception halls and living quarters, each opening upon several rooms of different dimensions, such as storerooms, workshops, and reception halls. The heart of the palace was the megaron. This was the throne room, laid around a circular hearth surrounded by four columns, the throne generally found on the right-hand side upon entering the room. The staircases in the palace of Pylos indicate palaces had two stories. Located on the top floor were the private quarters of the royal family and some storerooms. These palaces have yielded a wealth of artifacts and fragmentary frescoes.
The Palace of Domitian in Rome is the overall name given to the complex of palaces that were the primary residence in Rome of the Roman emperors from the late 1st century to the 5th. Some sculptures and decorative elements have been excavated. The Domus Aurea was a different palace, begun by Nero, where excavations from the Renaissance onwards have discovered remarkably well-preserved paintings in levels now below ground.
Diocletian's Palace in Split, Croatia was ready for occupation in 305 AD and is much the most significant ancient survival, having been turned in the Middle Ages into a fortified town; it still houses many people and businesses.
Palaces in East Asia, such as the imperial palaces of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, and large wooden structures in China's Forbidden City, consist of many low pavilions surrounded by vast, walled gardens in contrast to the single building palaces of Medieval Western Europe. Palaces were also built by post-classical African kingdoms such as the Ashanti Empire. Before its destruction during the Third Anglo-Ashanti War, the Ashanti royal palace at Kumasi, Ghana was described by English explorers Thomas Edward Bowdich and Winwood Reade as "an immense building of a variety of oblong courts and regular squares." |
synth_fc_2698_rep16 | Positive | Music | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamenco | 24 | Compás or time signature
Compás is the Spanish word for metre or time signature (in classical music theory). It also refers to the rhythmic cycle, or layout, of a palo.
The compás is fundamental to flamenco. Compás is most often translated as rhythm but it demands far more precise interpretation than any other Western style of music. If there is no guitarist available, the compás is rendered through hand clapping (palmas) or by hitting a table with the knuckles. The guitarist uses techniques like strumming (rasgueado) or tapping the soundboard (golpe). Changes of chords emphasize the most important downbeats.
Flamenco uses three basic counts or measures: Binary, Ternary and a form of a twelve-beat cycle that is unique to flamenco. There are also free-form styles including, among others, the tonás, saetas, malagueñas, tarantos, and some types of fandangos:
There are three types of 12-beat rhythms, which vary in their layouts, or use of accentuations: soleá, seguiriya and bulería:
The Bulerías is the emblematic palo of flamenco: today its 12-beat cycle is most often played with accents on the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th beats. The accompanying palmas are played in groups of 6 beats, giving rise to a multitude of counter-rhythms and percussive voices within the 12 beat compás. In certain regions like, Jerez, Spain, the rhythm stays in a simpler six-count rhythm, only including the twelve count in a musical resolve. This is like starting the counting at 9 so it goes this way: 9 10 11 12 1 2 - again, bold means the emphasis when clapping. In real life it is counted from 1 like: 1 2 3 4 5 6 and so on. |
synth_fc_1288_rep28 | No function call | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_(finance) | 1 | A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any form of financial instrument, even though the underlying legal and regulatory regime may not have such a broad definition. In some jurisdictions the term specifically excludes financial instruments other than equity and fixed income instruments. In some jurisdictions it includes some instruments that are close to equities and fixed income, e.g., equity warrants. Securities may be represented by a certificate or, more typically, they may be "non-certificated", that is in electronic (dematerialized) or "book entry only" form. Certificates may be bearer, meaning they entitle the holder to rights under the security merely by holding the security, or registered, meaning they entitle the holder to rights only if they appear on a security register maintained by the issuer or an intermediary. They include shares of corporate capital stock or mutual funds, bonds issued by corporations or governmental agencies, stock options or other options, limited partnership units, and various other formal investment instruments that are negotiable and fungible. |
synth_fc_2791_rep4 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_(geometry) | 15 | Symbol
The parallel symbol is ∥ {\displaystyle \parallel }. For example, A B ∥ C D {\displaystyle AB\parallel CD} indicates that line AB is parallel to line CD.
In the Unicode character set, the "parallel" and "not parallel" signs have codepoints U+2225 (∥) and U+2226 (∦), respectively. In addition, U+22D5 (⋕) represents the relation "equal and parallel to".
The same symbol is used for a binary function in electrical engineering (the parallel operator). It is distinct from the double-vertical-line brackets, U+2016 (‖), that indicate a norm (e.g. ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle \|x\|}), as well as from the logical or operator (||) in several programming languages. |
synth_fc_3372_rep19 | Negative | Store & Facility | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagpur | 24 | Media
The Hitavada is the largest selling broadsheet English daily newspaper of Central India. It was founded in 1911 by freedom fighter Gopal Krishna Gokhale in Nagpur. Other English dailies circulated in the city include The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Economic Times and Lokmat Times. Marathi dailies circulated in city are Nava Rashtra, Sakal, Lokmat, Tarun Bharat, Deshonatti, Maharashtra Times, Punya Nagari, Lokshahi, Divya Marathi and Loksatta. Hindi newspapers such as Nava Bharat, Dainik Bhaskar and Lokmat Samachar are also circulated. Employment News, which is published weekly, is also circulated in Hindi, English and Urdu. Online news portal such as Nagpur Today and The Live Nagpur are also available with special focus on local news.
All India Radio is the oldest radio broadcaster in the city and has its office in the Civil Lines area. Vividh Bharati, the entertainment radio station, and Gyan Vani, the educational radio station, are the FM radio stations of All India Radio and are available in the frequency 100.6 FM & 107.8 FM, respectively. Other private FM broadcasting channels with their frequencies include Radio City at 91.1 FM, Red FM at 93.5 FM, My FM at 94.3 FM, Radio Mirchi at 98.3 FM, Mirchi Love FM at 91.9 FM and Big FM at 92.7 FM.
Television broadcasting in Nagpur began on 15 August 1982 with the launch of Doordarshan, the Government of India's public service broadcaster. It transmits DD National and DD News, which are free-to-air terrestrial television channels and one regional satellite channel called DD Sahyadri. Private satellite channels started in the 1990s. Lord Buddha TV and Awaaz India TV are Free-to-air television which are based in the city and are available in various cable operators and DTH platforms Satellite TV channels are accessible via cable subscription, direct-broadcast satellite services or internet-based television. Cable TV operators or multi system operators in the city include UCN, GTPL, In Cable, BCN and Diamond Cable Network. All the DTH operators in the country are available in the city viz. Airtel digital TV, DD Free Dish, Dish TV, Sun Direct, D2h and Tata Play.The city also has its own Regional DTH operator, UCN, which serves the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra headquartered in the city itself.
Broadband Internet service is available in the city and is provided by various Internet service providers. Wi-Fi is available in major educational institutions and certain areas in the city, including government institutions under Smart City plan by NSSCDCL. As of 2023, 3G services in the city are provided by BSNL, Airtel and Vodafone Idea Limited while 4G services in the city are provided by Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea Limited and BSNL. and 5G services in the city are provided by Airtel and Jio |
synth_fc_119_rep13 | Negative | Biology | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus | 4 | Invasive
In many areas sow thistles are considered noxious weeds, as they grow quickly in a wide range of conditions and their wind-borne seeds allow them to spread rapidly. Sonchus arvensis, the perennial sow thistle, is considered the most economically detrimental, as it can crowd commercial crops, is a heavy consumer of nitrogen in soils, may deplete soil water of land left to fallow, and can regrow and sprout additional plants from its creeping roots. However, sow thistles are easily uprooted by hand, and their soft stems present little resistance to slashing or mowing.
Most livestock will readily devour sow thistle in preference to grass, and this lettuce-relative is edible and nutritious to humans—in fact this is the meaning of the second part of the Latin name of the common sow thistle, oleraceus. Attempts at weed control by herbicidal use, to the neglect of other methods, may have led to a proliferation of these species in some environments. |
synth_fc_3224_rep7 | Positive | Sport | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling | 15 | Performance aspects
I watch championship wrestling from Florida with wrestling commentator Gordon Solie. Is this all "fake"? If so, they deserve an Oscar.
Professional wrestling shows can be considered a form of theater in the round, with the ring, ringside area, and entryway comprising a stage. There is less of a fourth wall than in most theatric performances, similar to pantomime involving audience participation. The audience is recognized and acknowledged by the performers as spectators to the sporting event being portrayed, and are encouraged to interact as such. This leads to a high level of audience participation; in fact, their reactions can dictate how the performance unfolds. Often, individual matches will be part of a longer story line conflict between " babyfaces " (often shortened to just "faces") and " heels ". "Faces" (the "good guys") are those whose actions are intended to encourage the audience to cheer, while "heels" (the "bad guys") act to draw the spectators' ire.
In pro wrestling matches, performers often execute a series of pre-planned moves and attacks, ranging from grappling and throws found in some traditional forms of wrestling, to more spectacular stunts, sometimes involving props and special effects. The attacks in these matches are designed to appear dramatic while reducing the risk of serious injury as much as possible. Overall, the performers aim to minimize the actual injurious impact of their moves while maximizing their entertainment value. Shows produced by the largest professional wrestling promotions like WWE are traditionally performed in indoor venues, flagship events in this profession like WrestleMania are sometimes staged at outdoor venues; these shows are generally video recorded for live or delayed broadcasting for an audience all over the world. Additionally filmed footage known as "segments" or "promos" are usually used to accompany the drama in these shows.
Prior experience in legitimate wrestling is not a requirement for aspiring professional wrestlers, but is seen as an advantageous background. Despite its scripted format, there have been quite a number of performers throughout the history of pro wrestling who have had prior experience in legitimate wrestling, before transitioning to its theatrical form. A popular performer, Kurt Angle, is the first Olympic gold medalist in professional wrestling history, having won his gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in freestyle wrestling. Another prominent performer is Brock Lesnar, a former NCAA Wrestler who won the NCAA Division I National Championship in 2000. |
synth_fc_1779_rep5 | Positive | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene | 30 | Hygiene hypothesis and allergies
Although media coverage of the hygiene hypothesis has declined, popular folklore continues to sometimes assert that dirt is healthy and hygiene unnatural. This has caused health professionals to be concerned that hygiene behaviors which are the foundation of public health are being undermined. In response to the need for effective hygiene in home and everyday life settings, the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene developed a "risk-based" or targeted approach to home hygiene that seeks to ensure that hygiene measures are focused on the places and times most critical for infection transmission. While targeted hygiene was originally developed as an effective approach to hygiene practice, it also seeks, as far as possible, to sustain "normal" levels of exposure to the microbial flora of our environment to the extent that is important to build a balanced immune system.
Although there is substantial evidence that some microbial exposures in early childhood can in some way protect against allergies, there is no evidence that humans need exposure to harmful microbes (infection) or that it is necessary to develop a clinical infection. Nor is there evidence that hygiene measures such as hand washing, food hygiene, etc., are linked to increased susceptibility to atopic disease. If this is the case, there is no conflict between the goals of preventing infection and minimizing allergies. A consensus is now developing among experts that the answer lies in more fundamental changes in lifestyles that have led to decreased exposure to certain microbial or other species, such as helminths, that are important for development of immuno-regulatory mechanisms. There is still much uncertainty as to which lifestyle factors are involved. |
synth_fc_2053_rep9 | Positive | Hotel | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabul | 10 | Hotels and other lodging
Kabul has many hotels for domestic and foreign travelers. Guest houses are also found in the city. The better and safer ones are located in the Shahr-e Naw and Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhoods (the Green Zone). The following are some of the hotels in Kabul (in alphabetical order). |
synth_fc_3414_rep15 | Positive | Store & Facility | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color | 18 | Reproduction
Color reproduction is the science of creating colors for the human eye that faithfully represent the desired color. It focuses on how to construct a spectrum of wavelengths that will best evoke a certain color in an observer. Most colors are not spectral colors, meaning they are mixtures of various wavelengths of light. However, these non-spectral colors are often described by their dominant wavelength, which identifies the single wavelength of light that produces a sensation most similar to the non-spectral color. Dominant wavelength is roughly akin to hue.
There are many color perceptions that by definition cannot be pure spectral colors due to desaturation or because they are purples (mixtures of red and violet light, from opposite ends of the spectrum). Some examples of necessarily non-spectral colors are the achromatic colors (black, gray, and white) and colors such as pink, tan, and magenta.
Two different light spectra that have the same effect on the three color receptors in the human eye will be perceived as the same color. They are metamers of that color. This is exemplified by the white light emitted by fluorescent lamps, which typically has a spectrum of a few narrow bands, while daylight has a continuous spectrum. The human eye cannot tell the difference between such light spectra just by looking into the light source, although the color rendering index of each light source may affect the color of objects illuminated by these metameric light sources.
Similarly, most human color perceptions can be generated by a mixture of three colors called primaries. This is used to reproduce color scenes in photography, printing, television, and other media. There are a number of methods or color spaces for specifying a color in terms of three particular primary colors. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the particular application.
No mixture of colors, however, can produce a response truly identical to that of a spectral color, although one can get close, especially for the longer wavelengths, where the CIE 1931 color space chromaticity diagram has a nearly straight edge. For example, mixing green light (530 nm) and blue light (460 nm) produces cyan light that is slightly desaturated, because response of the red color receptor would be greater to the green and blue light in the mixture than it would be to a pure cyan light at 485 nm that has the same intensity as the mixture of blue and green.
Because of this, and because the primaries in color printing systems generally are not pure themselves, the colors reproduced are never perfectly saturated spectral colors, and so spectral colors cannot be matched exactly. However, natural scenes rarely contain fully saturated colors, thus such scenes can usually be approximated well by these systems. The range of colors that can be reproduced with a given color reproduction system is called the gamut. The CIE chromaticity diagram can be used to describe the gamut.
Another problem with color reproduction systems is connected with the initial measurement of color, or colorimetry. The characteristics of the color sensors in measurement devices (e.g. cameras, scanners) are often very far from the characteristics of the receptors in the human eye.
A color reproduction system "tuned" to a human with normal color vision may give very inaccurate results for other observers, according to color vision deviations to the standard observer.
The different color response of different devices can be problematic if not properly managed. For color information stored and transferred in digital form, color management techniques, such as those based on ICC profiles, can help to avoid distortions of the reproduced colors. Color management does not circumvent the gamut limitations of particular output devices, but can assist in finding good mapping of input colors into the gamut that can be reproduced. |
synth_fc_2926_rep23 | No function call | Restaurant | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich | 19 | Oktoberfest
At the Theresienwiese, the largest beer festival in the world, Munich's Oktoberfest runs for 16–18 days from the end of September through early October. In the last 200 years the festival has grown to span 85 acres and now welcomes over six million visitors every year. Beer is served from the six major Munich breweries. These are Augustiner-Bräu, Hacker-Pschorr Brewery, Löwenbräu Brewery, Paulaner Brewery, Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu, and Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München. Food must be bought in each tent. |
synth_fc_2541_rep3 | Positive | Museum | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber | 8 | Estate and legacy
Haber bequeathed his extensive private library to the Sieff Institute, where it was dedicated as the Fritz Haber Library on 29 January 1936. Hermann Haber helped to move the library and gave a speech at the dedication. It still exists as a private collection in the Weizmann Institute.
In 1981, the Minerva foundation of the Max Planck Society and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) established the Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, based at the Institute of Chemistry of the Hebrew University. Its purpose is the promotion of Israeli-German scientific collaboration in the field of Molecular Dynamics. The Center's library is also called Fritz Haber Library, but it is not immediately clear whether there is any connection to the 1936 homonymous library of the Sieff (now Weizmann) Institute.
The institute most closely associated with his work, the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at Dahlem (a suburb of Berlin), was renamed Fritz Haber Institute in 1953 and is part of the Max Planck Society. |
synth_fc_181_rep7 | Positive | Biology | Analysis | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemur | 18 | Distribution and diversity
Lemurs have adapted to fill many open ecological niches since making their way to Madagascar. Their diversity in both behavior and morphology (outward appearance) rivals that of the monkeys and apes found elsewhere in the world. Ranging in size from the 30 g (1.1 oz) Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, the world's smallest primate, to the recently extinct 160–200 kg (350–440 lb) Archaeoindris fontoynonti, lemurs evolved diverse forms of locomotion, varying levels of social complexity, and unique adaptations to the local climate.
Lemurs lack any shared traits that make them stand out from all other primates. Different types of lemurs have evolved unique combinations of unusual traits to cope with Madagascar's harsh, seasonal climate. These traits can include seasonal fat storage, hypometabolism (including torpor and hibernation), small group sizes, low encephalization (relative brain size), cathemerality (activity both day and night), and strict breeding seasons. Extreme resource limitations and seasonal breeding are also thought to have given rise to three other relatively common lemur traits: female social dominance, sexual monomorphism, and male–male competition for mates involving low levels of agonism, such as sperm competition.
Before the arrival of humans roughly 1500 to 2000 years ago, lemurs were found all across the island. However, early settlers quickly converted the forests to rice paddies and grassland through slash-and-burn agriculture (known locally as tavy), restricting lemurs to approximately 10% of the island's area, ~60,000 km (23,000 sq mi). Today, the diversity and complexity of lemur communities increases with floral diversity and precipitation and is highest in the rainforests of the east coast. Despite their adaptations for weathering extreme adversity, habitat destruction and hunting have resulted in lemur populations declining sharply, and their diversity has diminished, with the recent extinction of at least 17 species in eight genera, known collectively as the subfossil lemurs. Most of the approximately 100 species and subspecies of lemur are either threatened or endangered. Unless trends change, extinctions are likely to continue.
Until recently, giant lemurs existed on Madagascar. Now represented only by recent or subfossil remains, they were modern forms that were once part of the rich lemur diversity that has evolved in isolation. Some of their adaptations were unlike those seen in their living relatives. All 17 extinct lemurs were larger than the extant (living) forms, some weighing as much as 200 kg (440 lb), and are thought to have been active during the day. Not only were they unlike the living lemurs in both size and appearance, they also filled ecological niches that either no longer exist or are now left unoccupied. Large parts of Madagascar, which are now devoid of forests and lemurs, once hosted diverse primate communities that included more than 20 lemur species covering the full range of lemur sizes. |
synth_fc_3115_rep25 | Negative | Sport | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_(cue_sports) | 12 | Governing bodies
As a competitive sport, pool is governed internationally by the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA), which has multi-national, regional affiliates comprising the All Africa Pool Association (AAPA), Asian Pocket Billiard Union (APBU, including the Middle East), Billiard Congress of America (BCA, Canada and the US), Confederación Panamericana de Billar (CPB, Latin America and Caribbean), European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF, including Russia and the Near East), and Oceania Pocket Billiard Association (OPBA, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific islands).The WPA represents pool in the World Confederation of Billiards Sports, which in turn represents all forms of cue sports (including carom billiards and snooker) in the International Olympic Committee. |
synth_fc_2730_rep21 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch | 21 | Electronic
Electronic movements, also known as quartz movements, have few or no moving parts, except a quartz crystal which is made to vibrate by the piezoelectric effect. A varying electric voltage is applied to the crystal, which responds by changing its shape so, in combination with some electronic components, it functions as an oscillator. It resonates at a specific highly stable frequency, which is used to accurately pace a timekeeping mechanism. Most quartz movements are primarily electronic but are geared to drive mechanical hands on the face of the watch to provide a traditional analog display of the time, a feature most consumers still prefer.
In 1959 Seiko placed an order with Epson (a subsidiary company of Seiko and the 'brain' behind the quartz revolution) to start developing a quartz wristwatch. The project was codenamed 59A. By the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Seiko had a working prototype of a portable quartz watch which was used as the time measurements throughout the event.
The first prototypes of an electronic quartz wristwatch (not just portable quartz watches as the Seiko timekeeping devices at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964) were made by the CEH research laboratory in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. From 1965 through 1967 pioneering development work was done on a miniaturized 8192 Hz quartz oscillator, a thermo-compensation module, and an in-house-made, dedicated integrated circuit (unlike the hybrid circuits used in the later Seiko Astron wristwatch). As a result, the BETA 1 prototype set new timekeeping performance records at the International Chronometric Competition held at the Observatory of Neuchâtel in 1967. In 1970, 18 manufacturers exhibited production versions of the beta 21 wristwatch, including the Omega Electroquartz as well as Patek Philippe, Rolex Oysterquartz and Piaget.
The first quartz watch to enter production was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron, which hit the shelves on 25 December 1969, swiftly followed by the Swiss Beta 21, and then a year later the prototype of one of the world's most accurate wristwatches to date: the Omega Marine Chronometer. Since the technology having been developed by contributions from Japanese, American and Swiss, nobody could patent the whole movement of the quartz wristwatch, thus allowing other manufacturers to participate in the rapid growth and development of the quartz watch market. This ended – in less than a decade – almost 100 years of dominance by the mechanical wristwatch legacy. Modern quartz movements are produced in very large quantities, and even the cheapest wristwatches typically have quartz movements. Whereas mechanical movements can typically be off by several seconds a day, an inexpensive quartz movement in a child's wristwatch may still be accurate to within half a second per day – ten times more accurate than a mechanical movement.
After a consolidation of the mechanical watch industry in Switzerland during the 1970s, mass production of quartz wristwatches took off under the leadership of the Swatch Group of companies, a Swiss conglomerate with vertical control of the production of Swiss watches and related products. For quartz wristwatches, subsidiaries of Swatch manufacture watch batteries (Renata), oscillators (Oscilloquartz, now Micro Crystal AG) and integrated circuits (Ebauches Electronic SA, renamed EM Microelectronic-Marin). The launch of the new SWATCH brand in 1983 was marked by bold new styling, design, and marketing. Today, the Swatch Group maintains its position as the world's largest watch company.
Seiko 's efforts to combine the quartz and mechanical movements bore fruit after 20 years of research, leading to the introduction of the Seiko Spring Drive, first in a limited domestic market production in 1999 and to the world in September 2005. The Spring Drive keeps time within quartz standards without the use of a battery, using a traditional mechanical gear train powered by a spring, without the need for a balance wheel either.
In 2010, Miyota (Citizen Watch) of Japan introduced a newly developed movement that uses a 3-pronged quartz crystal that was exclusively produced for Bulova to be used in the Precisionist or Accutron II line, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which is claimed to be accurate to +/− 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second.
Radio time signal watches are a type of electronic quartz watch that synchronizes (time transfers) its time with an external time source such as in atomic clocks, time signals from GPS navigation satellites, the German DCF77 signal in Europe, WWVB in the US, and others. Movements of this type may, among others, synchronize the time of day and the date, the leap-year status and the state of daylight saving time (on or off). However, other than the radio receiver, these watches are normal quartz watches in all other aspects.
Electronic watches require electricity as a power source, and some mechanical movements and hybrid electronic-mechanical movements also require electricity. Usually, the electricity is provided by a replaceable battery. The first use of electrical power in watches was as a substitute for the mainspring, to remove the need for winding. The first electrically powered watch, the Hamilton Electric 500, was released in 1957 by the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Watch batteries (strictly speaking cells, as a battery is composed of multiple cells) are specially designed for their purpose. They are very small and provide tiny amounts of power continuously for very long periods (several years or more). In most cases, replacing the battery requires a trip to a watch-repair shop or watch dealer; this is especially true for watches that are water-resistant, as special tools and procedures are required for the watch to remain water-resistant after battery replacement. Silver-oxide and lithium batteries are popular today; mercury batteries, formerly quite common, are no longer used, for environmental reasons. Cheap batteries may be alkaline, of the same size as silver-oxide cells but providing shorter life. Rechargeable batteries are used in some solar-powered watches.
Some electronic watches are powered by the movement of the wearer. For instance, Seiko's kinetic-powered quartz watches use the motion of the wearer's arm: turning a rotating weight which causes a tiny generator to supply power to charge a rechargeable battery that runs the watch. The concept is similar to that of self-winding spring movements, except that electrical power is generated instead of mechanical spring tension.
Solar powered watches are powered by light. A photovoltaic cell on the face (dial) of the watch converts light to electricity, which is used to charge a rechargeable battery or capacitor. The movement of the watch draws its power from the rechargeable battery or capacitor. As long as the watch is regularly exposed to fairly strong light (such as sunlight), it never needs a battery replacement. Some models need only a few minutes of sunlight to provide weeks of energy (as in the Citizen Eco-Drive). Some of the early solar watches of the 1970s had innovative and unique designs to accommodate the array of solar cells needed to power them (Synchronar, Nepro, Sicura, and some models by Cristalonic, Alba, Seiko, and Citizen). As the decades progressed and the efficiency of the solar cells increased while the power requirements of the movement and display decreased, solar watches began to be designed to look like other conventional watches.
A rarely used power source is the temperature difference between the wearer's arm and the surrounding environment (as applied in the Citizen Eco-Drive Thermo). |
synth_fc_759_rep24 | No function call | DNA sequence | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics | 32 | Non-homologous end joining can cause some epigenetic marker alterations
Non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) repair of a double-strand break can cause a small number of demethylations of pre-existing cytosine DNA methylations downstream of the repaired double-strand break. Further work by Allen et al. showed that NHEJ of a DNA double-strand break in a cell could give rise to some progeny cells having repressed expression of the gene harboring the initial double-strand break and some progeny having high expression of that gene due to epigenetic alterations associated with NHEJ repair. The frequency of epigenetic alterations causing repression of a gene after an NHEJ repair of a DNA double-strand break in that gene may be about 0.9%. |
synth_fc_2665_rep13 | Negative | Music | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_rock | 8 | North America
The California punk scene was fully developed by early 1977. In Los Angeles, there were: the Weirdos, The Dils, the Zeros, the Bags, Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the Germs, Fear, The Go-Go's, X, the Dickies, and the relocated Tupperwares, now dubbed the Screamers. Black Flag formed in Hermosa Beach in 1976 under the name Panic. They developed a hardcore punk sound and played their debut public performance in a garage in Redondo Beach in December 1977. San Francisco's second wave included the Avengers, The Nuns, Negative Trend, the Mutants, and the Sleepers. By mid-1977 in downtown New York, bands such as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks led what became known as no wave. The Misfits formed in nearby New Jersey. Still developing what would become their signature B movie –inspired style, later dubbed horror punk, they made their first appearance at CBGB in April 1977.
The Dead Boys' debut LP, Young, Loud and Snotty, was released at the end of August. October saw two more debut albums from the scene: Richard Hell and the Voidoids' first full-length, Blank Generation, and the Heartbreakers' L.A.M.F. One track on the latter exemplified both the scene's close-knit character and the popularity of heroin within it: " Chinese Rocks " — the title refers to a strong form of the drug — was written by Dee Dee Ramone and Hell, both users, as were the Heartbreakers' Thunders and Nolan. (During the Heartbreakers' 1976 and 1977 tours of Britain, Thunders played a central role in popularizing heroin among the punk crowd there, as well.) The Ramones' third album, Rocket to Russia, appeared in November 1977. |
synth_fc_1531_rep21 | No function call | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollastonite | 1 | Wollastonite is a calcium inosilicate mineral (CaSiO3) that may contain small amounts of iron, magnesium, and manganese substituting for calcium. It is usually white. It forms when impure limestone or dolomite is subjected to high temperature and pressure, which sometimes occurs in the presence of silica-bearing fluids as in skarns or in contact with metamorphic rocks. Associated minerals include garnets, vesuvianite, diopside, tremolite, epidote, plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene and calcite. It is named after the English chemist and mineralogist William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828). Despite its chemical similarity to the compositional spectrum of the pyroxene group of minerals—where magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe) substitution for calcium ends with diopside and hedenbergite respectively—it is structurally very different, with a third SiO4−4 tetrahedron in the linked chain (as opposed to two in the pyroxenes). |
synth_fc_857_rep23 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi | 42 | Railways
In 2018, the budget reflected undergoing rail projects of worth ₹ 4,500 crore (US$540 million). Some important projects are: |
synth_fc_583_rep13 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCay | 9 | Later career (1921–1934)
After 1921, McCay was made to give up on animation when Hearst learned he devoted more of his time to animation than to his newspaper illustrations. Unexecuted ideas McCay had for animation projects included a collaboration with Jungle Imps author George Randolph Chester, a musical film called The Barnyard Band, and a film about the Americans' role in World War I.
McCay's son Robert married Theresa "Tedda" Munchausen on April 9, 1921. McCay bought them a nearby house as a wedding gift. The couple gave McCay two more grandchildren: Janet (named after McCay's mother) in 1922, and Robert in 1928. Robert suffered shell shock during World War I, and following the war had difficulty drawing. McCay tried to boost his son's confidence by finding him cartooning work, and some of the elder McCay's editorial cartoons were signed "Robert Winsor McCay, Jr." Robert also briefly revived the Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend strip as Rabid Reveries starting in 1924.
In 1922, McCay resumed doing vaudeville shows for the Keith circuit. He had a cameo in a newspaper office scene in the boxing film The Great White Way in early 1924.
McCay left Hearst upon the expiration of his contract in May 1924, bitter over not having received a promised $5,000 bonus. He returned to the Herald Tribune, and brought back Little Nemo beginning that August. The new strip displayed the virtuoso technique of the old, but the panels were laid out in an unvarying grid. Nemo took a more passive role in the stories, and there was no continuity. The strip came to an end in December 1926, as it was not popular with readers. Hearst executives had been trying to convince McCay to return to the American, and succeeded in 1927. While McCay was gone, his place had been filled by Mel Cummin, who was let go after McCay's return. Due to the lack of the 1920s Nemo's success, the Herald Tribune signed over all copyrights to the strip to McCay for one dollar.
In 1927, McCay attended a dinner in his honor in New York. After a considerable amount of drinking, McCay was introduced by animator Max Fleischer. McCay gave the gathered group of animators some technical advice, but when he felt the audience was not giving him attention, he berated his audience, saying, "Animation is an art. That is how I conceived it. But as I see, what you fellows have done with it, is making it into a trade. Not an art, but a trade. Bad Luck! " That September he appeared on the radio at WNAC, and on November 2 he was interviewed by Frank Craven for The Evening Journal ' s Woman's Hour. During both appearances he complained about the state of contemporary animation.
An executive of the American Tobacco Company approached McCay in 1929 to do an advertising campaign for a financial "sum in excess of his annual salary". Brisbane refused, noting that McCay's contract didn't allow outside work. When the executive stormed into Brisbane's office threatening to pull American Tobacco's advertising dollars from the American, Brisbane provided a written release for the work.
In 1932, McCay found himself in what he recalled as "the wildest ride" in his life when Hearst's son "Young Bill" drove him at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h) to the scene of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. They arrived there two hours after the crime was first reported to police, and were able to interview the gathered police before the grounds were closed off to the public. McCay sketched the scene, the staff, and the ladders the kidnappers used, which he was allowed to see up close. |
synth_fc_2012_rep12 | Positive | History | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jodl | 1 | Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was a German Generaloberst who served as the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – the German Armed Forces High Command – throughout World War II. After the war, Jodl was indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity at the Allied-organized Nuremberg trials. The principal charges against him related to his signing of the criminal Commando and Commissar Orders. Found guilty on all charges, he was sentenced to death and executed in Nuremberg in 1946. |
synth_fc_461_rep6 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database removal | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanpur | 8 | Civic Administration
Kanpur municipality was established on 22 November 1861, and was upgraded to a municipal corporation in 1959. The local government of Kanpur is governed under the Municipal act for the state, Uttar Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act, 1959.
The area under the municipal limits of Kanpur city, or Kanpur Municipal Corporation, is spread over an area of 403 square km. It oversees civic activities in the city. The head of the corporation is the mayor, but the executive and administration of the corporation are the responsibility of the municipal commissioner, who is an IAS officer. The executive wing is headed by municipal commissioner, Shri Shivasharanappa G N and has the following departments: Revenue, City Cleansing, Engineering, Marg Prakash, Health, Accounts, Personnel/HRD, Swasthya Vibhag, Education, Mukya Nagar Lekha Vibhag, Pariyojna, Udyan Vibhag, Chikitsa Vibhag, Encroachment & Cattle Catching Department. There is also an executive committee present in the city.
The development of infrastructure in the city is overseen by Kanpur Development Authority (KDA), which comes under the Housing Department of Uttar Pradesh government. The divisional commissioner of Kanpur acts as the ex-officio Chairman of KDA, whereas a vice chairperson, a government-appointed IAS officer, looks after the daily matters of the authority. The current vice-chairman of Kanpur Development Authority is Shri Vishakh G Iyer in additional charge.
The municipality receives revenue from general tax, advertisement tax, income from municipal properties, grants from state government etc. |
synth_fc_2413_rep5 | Negative | Movie | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elia_Kazan | 8 | Being an “actor's director”
Joanna Rapf adds that Kazan was most admired for his close work with actors, noting that director Nicholas Ray considered him "the best actor's director the United States has ever produced". Film historian Foster Hirsch explains that "he created virtually a new acting style, which was the style of the Method... allowed for the actors to create great depth of psychological realism".
Among the actors who described Kazan as an important influence in their career was Patricia Neal, who co-starred with Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd (1957): "He was very good. He was an actor and he knew how we acted. He would come and talk to you privately. I liked him a lot." Anthony Franciosa, a supporting actor in the film, explains how Kazan encouraged his actors:
He would always say, "Let me see what you can do. Let me see it. Don't talk to me about it." You felt that you had a man who was completely on your side—no qualms about anything you did. He gave you a tremendous sense of confidence... He never made me feel as though I was acting for the camera. Many times, I never even knew where the camera was.
However, in order to get quality acting from Andy Griffith, in his first screen appearance, and achieve what Schickel calls "an astonishing movie debut", Kazan would often take surprising measures. In one important and highly emotional scene, for example, Kazan had to give Griffith fair warning: "I may have to use extraordinary means to make you do this. I may have to get out of line. I don't know any other way of getting an extraordinary performance out of an actor."
Actress Terry Moore calls Kazan her "best friend", and notes that "he made you feel better than you thought you could be. I never had another director that ever touched him. I was spoiled for life". "He would find out if your life was like the character", says Carroll Baker, star of Baby Doll; "he was the best director with actors".
Kazan's need to remain close to his actors continued up to his last film, The Last Tycoon (1976). He remembered that Robert De Niro, the star of the film, "would do almost anything to succeed", and even cut his weight down from 170 to 128 pounds for the role. Kazan adds that De Niro "is one of a select number of actors I've directed who work hard at their trade, and the only one who asked to rehearse on Sundays. Most of the others play tennis. Bobby and I would go over the scenes to be shot."
The powerful dramatic roles Kazan brought out from many of his actors was due, partly, to his ability to recognize their personal character traits. Although he did not know De Niro before this film, for example, Kazan later writes, "Bobby is more meticulous... he's very imaginative. He's very precise. He figures everything out both inside and outside. He has good emotion. He's a character actor: everything he does he calculates. In a good way, but he calculates." Kazan developed and used those personality traits for his character in the film. Although the film did poorly at the box office, some reviewers praised De Niro's acting. Film critic Marie Brenner writes that "for De Niro, it is a role that surpasses even his brilliant and daring portrayal of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, part II,... performance deserves to be compared with the very finest".
Marlon Brando, in his autobiography, goes into detail about the influence Kazan had on his acting:
I have worked with many movie directors—some good, some fair, some terrible. Kazan was the best actors' director by far of any I've worked for... the only one who ever really stimulated me, got into a part with me and virtually acted it with me... he chose good actors, encouraged them to improvise, and then improvised on the improvisation... He gave his cast freedom and... was always emotionally involved in the process and his instincts were perfect... I've never seen a director who became as deeply and emotionally involved in a scene as Gadg... he got so wrought up that he started chewing on his hat.
He was an arch-manipulator of actors' feelings, and he was extraordinarily talented; perhaps we will never see his like again. |
synth_fc_1388_rep21 | Positive | Food | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu | 4 | Cuisine
Daegu cuisine is similar to that consumed in the Yeongnam region. The city is known for certain unique dishes such as: |
synth_fc_2214_rep11 | Positive | Law | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi | 12 | 2009 trespass incident
On 3 May 2009, an American man, identified as John Yettaw, swam across Inya Lake to her house uninvited and was arrested when he made his return trip three days later. He had attempted to make a similar trip two years earlier, but for unknown reasons was turned away. He later claimed at trial that he was motivated by a divine vision requiring him to notify her of an impending terrorist assassination attempt. On 13 May, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested for violating the terms of her house arrest because the swimmer, who pleaded exhaustion, was allowed to stay in her house for two days before he attempted the swim back. Aung San Suu Kyi was later taken to Insein Prison, where she could have faced up to five years' confinement for the intrusion. The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and her two maids began on 18 May and a small number of protesters gathered outside. Diplomats and journalists were barred from attending the trial; however, on one occasion, several diplomats from Russia, Thailand and Singapore and journalists were allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. The prosecution had originally planned to call 22 witnesses. It also accused John Yettaw of embarrassing the country. During the ongoing defence case, Aung San Suu Kyi said she was innocent. The defence was allowed to call only one witness (out of four), while the prosecution was permitted to call 14 witnesses. The court rejected two character witnesses, NLD members Tin Oo and Win Tin, and permitted the defence to call only a legal expert. According to one unconfirmed report, the junta was planning to, once again, place her in detention, this time in a military base outside the city. In a separate trial, Yettaw said he swam to Aung San Suu Kyi's house to warn her that her life was "in danger". The national police chief later confirmed that Yettaw was the "main culprit" in the case filed against Aung San Suu Kyi. According to aides, Aung San Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday in jail sharing biryani rice and chocolate cake with her guards.
Her arrest and subsequent trial received worldwide condemnation by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Security Council, Western governments, South Africa, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member. The Burmese government strongly condemned the statement, as it created an "unsound tradition" and criticised Thailand for meddling in its internal affairs. The Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted in the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar as saying that the incident "was trumped up to intensify international pressure on Burma by internal and external anti-government elements who do not wish to see the positive changes in those countries' policies toward Burma". Ban responded to an international campaign by flying to Burma to negotiate, but Than Shwe rejected all of his requests.
On 11 August 2009, the trial concluded with Aung San Suu Kyi being sentenced to imprisonment for three years with hard labour. This sentence was commuted by the military rulers to further house arrest of 18 months. On 14 August, US Senator Jim Webb visited Burma, visiting with junta leader General Than Shwe and later with Aung San Suu Kyi. During the visit, Webb negotiated Yettaw's release and deportation from Burma. Following the verdict of the trial, lawyers of Aung San Suu Kyi said they would appeal against the 18-month sentence. On 18 August, United States President Barack Obama asked the country's military leadership to set free all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi. In her appeal, Aung San Suu Kyi had argued that the conviction was unwarranted. However, her appeal against the August sentence was rejected by a Burmese court on 2 October 2009. Although the court accepted the argument that the 1974 constitution, under which she had been charged, was null and void, it also said the provisions of the 1975 security law, under which she has been kept under house arrest, remained in force. The verdict effectively meant that she would be unable to participate in the elections scheduled to take place in 2010—the first in Burma in two decades. Her lawyer stated that her legal team would pursue a new appeal within 60 days. |
synth_fc_2977_rep14 | Positive | School | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda | 8 | Propaganda theory and education
During the 1930s, educators in the United States and around the world became concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism and other forms of violent extremism. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was formed to introduce methods of instruction for high school and college students, helping learners to recognize and desist propaganda by identifying persuasive techniques. This work built upon classical rhetoric and it was informed by suggestion theory and social scientific studies of propaganda and persuasion. In the 1950s, propaganda theory and education examined the rise of American consumer culture, and this work was popularized by Vance Packard in his 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders. European theologian Jacques Ellul's landmark work, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes framed propaganda in relation to larger themes about the relationship between humans and technology. Media messages did not serve to enlighten or inspire, he argued. They merely overwhelm by arousing emotions and oversimplifying ideas, limiting human reasoning and judgement.
In the 1980s, academics recognized that news and journalism could function as propaganda when business and government interests were amplified by mass media. The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky which argues systemic biases exist in mass media that are shaped by structural economic causes. It argues that the way in which commercial media institutions are structured and operate (e.g. through advertising revenue, concentration of media ownership, or access to sources) creates an inherent conflict of interest that make them act as propaganda for powerful political and commercial interests:
The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
First presented in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), the propaganda model analyses commercial mass media as businesses that sell a product – access to readers and audiences – to other businesses (advertisers) and that benefit from access to information from government and corporate sources to produce their content. The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that shape the content that is presented in news media: ownership of the medium, reliance on advertising revenue, access to news sources, threat of litigation and commercial backlash (flak), and anti-communism and "fear ideology". The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic political economic structure, and the model has subsequently been applied by other scholars to study media bias in other countries.
By the 1990s, the topic of propaganda was no longer a part of public education, having been relegated to a specialist subject. Secondary English educators grew fearful of the study of propaganda genres, choosing to focus on argumentation and reasoning instead of the highly emotional forms of propaganda found in advertising and political campaigns. In 2015, the European Commission funded Mind Over Media, a digital learning platform for teaching and learning about contemporary propaganda. The study of contemporary propaganda is growing in secondary education, where it is seen as a part of language arts and social studies education. |
synth_fc_1771_rep23 | Positive | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory | 7 | Public health campaigns
Successful methods for dispelling conspiracy theories have been studied in the context of public health campaigns. A key characteristic of communication strategies to address medical conspiracy theories is the use of techniques that rely less on emotional appeals. It is more effective to use methods that encourage people to process information rationally. The use of visual aids is also an essential part of these strategies. Since conspiracy theories are based on intuitive thinking, and visual information processing relies on intuition, visual aids are able to compete directly for the public's attention.
In public health campaigns, information retention by the public is highest for loss-framed messages that include more extreme outcomes. However, excessively appealing to catastrophic scenarios (e.g. low vaccination rates causing an epidemic) may provoke anxiety, which is associated with conspiracism and could increase belief in conspiracy theories instead. Scare tactics have sometimes had mixed results, but are generally considered ineffective. An example of this is the use of images that showcase disturbing health outcomes, such as the impact of smoking on dental health. One possible explanation is that information processed via the fear response is typically not evaluated rationally, which may prevent the message from being linked to the desired behaviors.
A particularly important technique is the use of focus groups to understand exactly what people believe, and the reasons they give for those beliefs. This allows messaging to focus on the specific concerns that people identify, and on topics that are easily misinterpreted by the public, since these are factors which conspiracy theories can take advantage of. In addition, discussions with focus groups and observations of the group dynamics can indicate which anti-conspiracist ideas are most likely to spread.
Interventions that address medical conspiracy theories by reducing powerlessness include emphasizing the principle of informed consent, giving patients all the relevant information without imposing decisions on them, to ensure that they have a sense of control. Improving access to healthcare also reduces medical conspiracism. However, doing so by political efforts can also fuel additional conspiracy theories, which occurred with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in the United States. Another successful strategy is to require people to watch a short video when they fulfil requirements such as registration for school or a drivers' license, which has been demonstrated to improve vaccination rates and signups for organ donation.
Another approach is based on viewing conspiracy theories as narratives which express personal and cultural values, making them less susceptible to straightforward factual corrections, and more effectively addressed by counter-narratives. Counter-narratives can be more engaging and memorable than simple corrections, and can be adapted to the specific values held by individuals and cultures. These narratives may depict personal experiences, or alternatively they can be cultural narratives. In the context of vaccination, examples of cultural narratives include stories about scientific breakthroughs, about the world before vaccinations, or about heroic and altruistic researchers. The themes to be addressed would be those that could be exploited by conspiracy theories to increase vaccine hesitancy, such as perceptions of vaccine risk, lack of patient empowerment, and lack of trust in medical authorities. |
synth_fc_1084_rep17 | Positive | Finance | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy | 2 | Broad and narrow
These various subsidies can be divided into broad and narrow. Narrow subsidies are those monetary transfers that are easily identifiable and have a clear intent. They are commonly characterised by a monetary transfer between governments and institutions or businesses and individuals. A classic example is a government payment to a farmer. |
synth_fc_3599_rep17 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet | 33 | Remote work
Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videotelephony, and VoIP so that work may be performed from any location, most conveniently the worker's home. It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows workers to communicate over long distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost. More workers have adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home to their corporate intranet and internal communication networks. |
synth_fc_869_rep30 | Positive | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tbilisi | 9 | Economy
With a nominal GDP of 32 billion Georgian lari (€ 10 billion) in 2022, Tbilisi is the economic center of the country, generating more than half of Georgia's GDP. Its GDP per capita of 26,769 Georgian lari (€8,700) is exceeding the national average by more than 50 percent. The service sector itself is dominated by the wholesale and retail trade sector, reflecting the role of Tbilisi as transit and logistics hub for the country and the South Caucasus. The manufacturing sector contributes only 12 percent to Tbilisi's GDP, but is much larger, by employment and total value added, than the manufacturing sectors in any other region of Georgia. The unemployment rate in Tbilisi is – with 22.5 percent – significantly higher in Tbilisi than in the regions. |
synth_fc_2132_rep18 | Positive | Law | Document search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Mar%C3%ADa_Bordaberry | 1 | Juan María Bordaberry Arocena, was an Uruguayan politician and cattle rancher who served as the 34th President of Uruguay from 1972 until his resignation in 1976 and the 1st President of the Civic-Military Dictatorship from 1973 to 1976. Previously, he was the Minister of Agriculture from 1969 to 1972. He came to office following the Presidential elections of late 1971. In 1973, Bordaberry dissolved the General Assembly and was widely regarded as ruling by decree as a military-sponsored dictator until disagreements with the military led to his being overthrown before his original term of office had expired. On 17 November 2006 he was arrested in a case involving four deaths, including two of members of the General Assembly during the period of civilian-military rule in the 1970s. |
synth_fc_3738_rep19 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geyser | 14 | Valley of Geysers, Russia
The Valley of Geysers (Russian: Долина гейзеров), located in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, is the second-largest concentration of geysers in the world. The area was discovered and explored by Tatyana Ustinova in 1941. There are about 200 geysers in the area, along with many hot-water springs and perpetual spouters. The area was formed by vigorous volcanic activity. The peculiar way of eruptions is an important feature of these geysers. Most of the geysers erupt at angles, and only very few have the geyser cones that exist at many other of the world's geyser fields. On June 3, 2007, a massive mudflow influenced two-thirds of the valley. It was then reported that a thermal lake was forming above the valley. A few days later, the water was observed to have receded somewhat, exposing some of the submerged features. Velikan Geyser, one of the field's largest, was not buried in the slide and has recently been observed to be active. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.