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Topic Review

Environmental Niche Modelling

Environmental niche modelling, alternatively known as species distribution modelling, (ecological) niche modelling, predictive habitat distribution modelling, and climate envelope modelling refers to the process of using computer algorithms to predict the distribution of species in geographic space on the basis of a mathematical representation of their known distribution in environmental space (= realized ecological niche). The environment is in most cases represented by climate data (such as temperature, and precipitation), but other variables such as soil type, water depth, and land cover can also be used. These models allow for interpolating between a limited number of species occurrence and they are used in several research areas in conservation biology, ecology and evolution. The extent to which such modelled data reflect real-world species distributions will depend on a number of factors, including the nature, complexity, and accuracy of the models used and the quality of the available environmental data layers; the availability of sufficient and reliable species distribution data as model input; and the influence of various factors such as barriers to dispersal, geologic history, or biotic interactions, that increase the difference between the realized niche and the fundamental niche. Environmental niche modelling may be considered a part of the discipline of biodiversity informatics.

2.5K
31 Oct 2022

Topic Review

The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC connectors on the exposed rear edge that provide connectivity to common analog video sources like VHS VCRs. The related software tools support video switching, chroma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation. Together, the hardware and software provided, for a few thousand U.S. dollars, a video editing suite that rivaled the output of contemporary (i.e. early 1990s) professional systems costing ten times as much. It allowed small studios to produce high-quality material and resulted in a cottage industry for video production not unlike the success of the Macintosh in the desktop publishing (DTP) market only a few years earlier. The Video Toaster won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. Other parts of the original software package were spun off as stand-alone products, notably LightWave 3D, and achieved success on their own. As the Amiga platform lost market share and Commodore International went bankrupt in 1994 as a result of declining sales, the Video Toaster was moved to the Microsoft Windows platform where it is still available. The company also produces what is essentially a portable pre-packaged version of the Video Toaster along with all the computer hardware needed, as the TriCaster. These became all-digital units in 2014, ending production of the analog Video Toaster line.

2.5K
11 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Coverage Path Planning Methods Focusing on Energy Efficient

The coverage path planning (CPP) algorithms aim to cover the total area of interest with minimum overlapping. The goal of the CPP algorithms is to minimize the total covering path and execution time. Significant research has been done in robotics, particularly for multi-unmanned unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperation and energy efficiency in CPP problems.

2.5K
10 Feb 2022

Topic Review

Weights and Measures Acts (UK)

Weights and measures acts are acts of the British Parliament determining the regulation of weights and measures. It also refers to similar royal and parliamentary acts of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and the medieval Welsh states. The earliest of these were originally untitled but were given descriptive glosses or titles based upon the monarch under whose reign they were promulgated. Several omnibus modern acts are entitled the Weights and Measures Act and are distinguished by the year of their enactment. There have been many laws concerned with weights and measures in the United Kingdom or parts of it over the last 1000 or so years. The acts may catalogue lawful weights and measures, prescribe the mechanism for inspection and enforcement of the use of such weights and measures and may set out circumstances under which they may be amended. Modern legislation may, in addition to specific requirements, set out circumstances under which the incumbent minister may amend the legislation by means of statutory instruments. Prior to the Weights and Measures Act 1985, weights and measures acts were only concerned with trade law where the weight or size of the goods being traded was important. The 1985 act, however, had a broader scope, encompassing all aspects covered by the European Economic Community (EEC) European Commission directive 80/181/EEC. As of 25 April 2012, the current primary legislation in the United Kingdom is the 1985 Act, which was last amended by statutory instrument in 2011. Statutory instruments made under the authority of the Act do not amend the Act per se, but regulate particular areas covered by the Act. The Act is currently enforced by the 200 Trading Standards Offices managed by local authorities around the country. Definitions of units of measurements and the technical equipment relating to weights and measures are provided by the National Measurement Office, an agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

2.5K
14 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is a role-playing video game developed by Atlus for the Nintendo 3DS . It is part of the Persona series, itself part of the larger Megami Tensei franchise. It was published across all territories in 2014: released in June in Japan, November in North America and Europe, and December in Australia. Atlus published the game in Japan and North America, while NIS America published it in the PAL region. The story of Persona Q is a crossover between Persona 3 and Persona 4, whose characters are drawn from their respective time periods by an unknown force and sent into a replica of Persona 4's Yasogami High School in another world. Meeting with Zen and Rei, two people whose memories were taken, the groups must unite and explore four labyrinths in the school to recover treasures hidden within. These treasures can restore Zen and Rei's memories which might help them find a way to escape. The gameplay fuses elements of the Persona and Etrian Odyssey series, and focuses on first-person dungeon crawling through labyrinths and combat using the characters' "Persona" abilities against hostiles known as Shadows. Development on the game began after Atlus's success with collaborating with an external developer on the 2012 fighting game Persona 4 Arena. It was based on the wish to create a collaborative spin-off with the Etrian Odyssey development team and fan demands for a Persona game on the 3DS. The Persona Q development team was made up of staff from both Etrian Odyssey IV and the main Persona series. Series character designer Shigenori Soejima created the cast's new deformed "chibi" appearances, while the music was composed by Atsushi Kitajoh and Toshiki Konishi with supervision by series composer Shoji Meguro. First announced in 2013 alongside the console port of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Persona 4 and Persona 5, it was the first Persona game to be developed for a Nintendo platform. It released to strong sales and positive reviews from critics, with several enjoying the game's comedic writing, presentation, and blend between Persona and Etrian Odyssey's gameplay styles. A sequel, Persona Q2, was released for the 3DS in Japan in November 2018 and worldwide in June 2019.

2.5K
24 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Fog and Edge Computing

The fourth industrial revolution heralds a paradigm shift in how people, processes, things, data and networks communicate and connect with each other. Conventional computing infrastructures are struggling to satisfy dramatic growth in demand from a deluge of connected heterogeneous end points located at the edge of networks while, at the same time, meeting quality of service levels. The complexity of computing at the edge makes it increasingly difficult for infrastructure providers to plan for and provision resources to meet this demand. While simulation frameworks are used extensively in the modelling of cloud computing environments in order to test and validate technical solutions, they are at a nascent stage of development and adoption for fog and edge computing. This paper provides an overview of challenges posed by fog and edge computing in relation to simulation.

2.4K
23 Dec 2020

Topic Review

AMD Radeon Software Crimson

AMD Radeon Software (formerly named ATI Catalyst and AMD Catalyst) is a device driver and utility software package for Advanced Micro Devices's graphics cards and APUs. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Linux, on 32- and 64-bit x86 processors.

2.4K
07 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Cooking Mama (クッキングママ, Kukkingu Mama) is a cookery simulation-styled minigame compilation video game for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and iOS platforms, developed by Office Create and published by Taito, Majesco Entertainment, and 505 Games. It was awarded IGN's "Best Of E3" award for 2006. It was followed by a sequel for the DS, Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends. Two games have been made for the Wii: Cooking Mama and Cooking Mama.

2.4K
19 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Radix-16 Floating Point

IBM hexadecimal floating point is number representation. IBM System/360 computers, and subsequent machines based on that architecture (mainframes), support a hexadecimal floating-point format (HFP). In comparison to IEEE 754 floating-point, the IBM floating-point format has a longer significand, and a shorter exponent. All IBM floating-point formats have 7 bits of exponent with a bias of 64. The normalized range of representable numbers is from 16−65 to 1663 (approx. 5.39761 × 10−79 to 7.237005 × 1075). The number is represented as the following formula: (−1)sign × 0.significand × 16exponent−64.

2.4K
16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Windows 10 Version History (Version 1703)

Windows 10 Creators Update (also known as version 1703 and codenamed "Redstone 2") is the third major update to Windows 10 and the second in a series of updates under the Redstone codenames. It carries the build number 10.0.15063.

2.4K
28 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Bumble is a location-based social application that facilitates communication between interested users. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in same-sex matches either person can send a message first. Users can sign up using their phone number or Facebook profile, and have options of searching for romantic matches or, in "BFF mode", friends. Bumble Bizz facilitates business communications. Bumble was founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd shortly after she left Tinder, a dating app she co-founded, due to growing tensions with other company executives. Wolfe Herd has described Bumble as a "feminist dating app". As of September 2019, with a monthly user base of 5 million, Bumble is the second-most popular dating app in the U.S. after Tinder. According to a June 2016 survey, 46.2% of its users are female. According to Forbes , the company is valued at more than $1 billion, and has over 55 million users.

2.4K
17 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Studio One is a digital audio workstation (DAW) application, used to create, record, mix and master music and other audio, with functionality also available for video. Initially developed as a successor to the KRISTAL Audio Engine, it was acquired by PreSonus and first released in 2009 for macOS and Microsoft Windows. In addition to the commercial editions of the software (known as Studio One Artist and Studio One Professional), PreSonus also distributes a free edition, with reduced functionality (known as Studio One Prime). The Professional edition is also available as part of the PreSonus Sphere monthly subscription program.

2.4K
21 Oct 2022

Topic Review

In actuarial science and demography, a life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before their next birthday ("probability of death"). In other words, it represents the survivorship of people from a certain population. They can also be explained as a long-term mathematical way to measure a population's longevity. Tables have been created by demographers including Graunt, Reed and Merrell, Keyfitz, and Greville. There are two types of life tables used in actuarial science. The period life table represents mortality rates during a specific time period of a certain population. A cohort life table, often referred to as a generation life table, is used to represent the overall mortality rates of a certain population's entire lifetime. They must have had to be born during the same specific time interval. A cohort life table is more frequently used because it is able to make a prediction of any expected changes in mortality rates of a population in the future. This type of table also analyzes patterns in mortality rates that can be observed over time. Both of these types of life tables are created based on an actual population from the present, as well as an educated prediction of the experience of a population in the near future. In order to find the true life expectancy average, 100 years would need to pass and by then finding that data would be of no use as healthcare is continually advancing. Other life tables in historical demography may be based on historical records, although these often undercount infants and understate infant mortality, on comparison with other regions with better records, and on mathematical adjustments for varying mortality levels and life expectancies at birth. From this starting point, a number of inferences can be derived. Life tables are also used extensively in biology and epidemiology. An area that uses this tool is Social Security. It examines the mortality rates of all the people who have Social Security to decide which actions to take. The concept is also of importance in product life cycle management. All mortality tables are specific to environmental and life circumstances, and are used to probabilistically determine expected maximum age within those environmental conditions.

2.4K
02 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Latin Letters Used in Mathematics

Many letters of the Latin alphabet, both capital and small, are used in mathematics, science, and engineering to denote by convention specific or abstracted constants, variables of a certain type, units, multipliers, or physical entities. Certain letters, when combined with special formatting, take on special meaning. Below is an alphabetical list of the letters of the alphabet with some of their uses. The field in which the convention applies is mathematics unless otherwise noted.

2.4K
15 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Human-Computer Interaction Institute

The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) is a department within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is considered one of the leading centers of human-computer interaction research, and was named one of the top ten most innovative schools in information technology by Computer World in 2008. For the past three decades, the institute has been the predominant publishing force at leading HCI venues, most notably ACM CHI, where it regularly contributes more than 10% of the papers. Research at the institute aims to understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities by integrating aspects of computer science, design, social science, and learning science. Depending on the selected coursework that the student decides to take (in addition to some core classes), they are able to form a schedule specific to the field they are interested in. For example, if a student is specifically interested in pursuing a user experience design profession, they are able to choose courses that focus mainly on the design process behind applications. If the student is interested in product management or project management, they can select electives that encourage group work and cross-collaboration across majors so that they may learn some of the tasks of these professions. A list of courses and course descriptions is included below. HCII offers an HCI major for undergraduates, as well a master's degree and a PhD in HCI. Students from various academic backgrounds come together from around the world to participate in these programs. Students enter the program at various stages in their academic and professional careers, with various levels of experience. HCII research and educational programs span a full cycle of value creation. The cycle includes research on how people work, play, and communicate within groups, organizations, and social structures. It includes the design, creation, and evaluation of technologies and tools to support human and social activities.

2.4K
29 Sep 2022

Topic Review

In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or as a dinkus (section divider). Some of the dingbat symbols have been used as signature marks, used in bookbinding to order sections. In the computer industry, a Dingbat font was a computer font that has symbols and shapes that reused the code points designated for alphabetical or numeric characters. This practice was necessitated by the limited number of code points available in 20th century operating systems. Most modern fonts are based on Unicode, which has unique code points for dingbat glyphs.

2.4K
25 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a term used to represent a set of cognitive, strategic and practical processes by which design concepts (proposals for products, buildings, machines, communications, etc.) are developed. Many of the key concepts and aspects of design thinking have been identified through studies, across different design domains, of design cognition and design activity in both laboratory and natural contexts. Design thinking is also associated with prescriptions for the innovation of products and services within business and social contexts. Some of these prescriptions have been criticized for oversimplifying the design process and trivializing the role of technical knowledge and skills.

2.4K
04 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Dream Chronicles

Dream Chronicles, originally titled Dream Chronicles: The Endless Slumber, is an adventure, hidden object, and puzzle casual game developed by KatGames and published by PlayFirst. It is the first installment in the series. Set in a mystical world where mortal and fairy realms collide, the game tells the story of a mortal woman named Faye who is the only being able to awaken from a powerful fairy's dream spell. She embarks on an adventure through a dream world to find her fairy husband and save her hometown. To solve the mystery, players must complete puzzles and search for clues leading to the whereabouts of Faye's husband. As the first part of the first trilogy, Dream Chronicles spawned two direct sequels, Dream Chronicles 2 and Dream Chronicles, which were released in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

2.4K
12 Oct 2022

Topic Review

Base 16 Floating Point

IBM System/360 computers, and subsequent machines based on that architecture (mainframes), support a hexadecimal floating-point format (HFP). In comparison to IEEE 754 floating-point, the IBM floating-point format has a longer significand, and a shorter exponent. All IBM floating-point formats have 7 bits of exponent with a bias of 64. The normalized range of representable numbers is from 16−65 to 1663 (approx. 5.39761 × 10−79 to 7.237005 × 1075). The number is represented as the following formula: (−1)sign × 0.significand × 16exponent−64.

2.4K
01 Dec 2022

Topic Review

Ceph (pronounced /ˈsɛf/) is an open-source software-defined storage platform that implements object storage on a single distributed computer cluster and provides 3-in-1 interfaces for object-, block- and file-level storage. Ceph aims primarily for completely distributed operation without a single point of failure, scalability to the exabyte level, and to be freely available. Since version 12, Ceph does not rely on other filesystems and can directly manage HDDs and SSDs with its own storage backend BlueStore and can completely self reliantly expose a POSIX filesystem. Ceph replicates data and makes it fault-tolerant, using commodity hardware and Ethernet IP and requiring no specific hardware support. The Ceph’s system offers disaster recovery and data redundancy through techniques such as replication, erasure coding, snapshots and storage cloning. As a result of its design, the system is both self-healing and self-managing, aiming to minimize administration time and other costs. In this way, administrators have a single, consolidated system that avoids silos and collects the storage within a common management framework. Ceph consolidates several storage use cases and improves resource utilization. It also lets an organization deploy servers where needed.

2.3K
14 Oct 2022

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