Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
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Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, 256 pages Publisher: Oxford University Press 2011 Book description: 'If you love a good story, then look no further. Oxford Children's Classics bring together the most unforgettable stories ever told. They're books to treasure and return to again and again. Join Alice as she heads down the rabbit-hole and into Wonderland, a world of mad tea parties and disappearing cats. Then continue as she journeys through the looking-glass to a place of strange logic and magical chess pieces. Alice never knows what will happen next . . . and neither will you!' 
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Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands 
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Fleming, Ian, You Only Live Twice, Fine Communications; First Edition edition 1997 'When Ernt Stavro Blofield blasted into eternity the girl whom James Bond had married only hours before, the heart, the zest for life, went out of Bond. Incredibly, from being a top agent in the Secret Service, he had gone to pieces, was even on the verge of becoming a security risk. M. is persuaded to fgve him one last chance—an impossible mission far removed from his iuual duties—and Bond leaves for Japan, There, coming under the orders of the formidable "Tiger" Tanaka, Head of the Japanese Secret Service, the Koan-chosa-Kyoku, he is indeed subjected to the shock treatment his condition demanded. Shock treatment? The reader will also be subjected to its full measure in this, perhaps the most bizarre and doom-fraught of all James Bond's adventures.'  
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Gibson, Carrie , El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America, Atlantic Monthly Press (February 5, 2019 ' Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots―ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.' 
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Greenberg, Karen R, and Joshua L Dratel, Anthony Lewis, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Graib, Cambridge University Press 2005 Book Description: 'The Torture Papers document the so-called 'torture memos' and reports which US government officials wrote to prepare the way for, and to document, coercive interrogation and torture in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. These documents present for the first time a compilation of materials that prior to publication have existed only piecemeal in the public domain. The Bush Administration, concerned about the legality of harsh interrogation techniques, understood the need to establish a legally viable argument to justify such procedures. The memos and reports document the systematic attempt of the US Government to prepare the way for torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices, forbidden under international law, with the express intent of evading legal punishment in the aftermath of any discovery of these practices and policies.' 
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Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' 
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Kuhn, Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]  
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Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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Souder, William, On Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Crown 2012 'Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her seminal book, Silent Spring, here is an indelible new portrait of Rachel Carson, founder of the environmental movement She loved the ocean and wrote three books about its mysteries, including the international bestseller The Sea Around Us. But it was with her fourth book, Silent Spring, that this unassuming biologist transformed our relationship with the natural world. Rachel Carson began work on Silent Spring in the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT, whose inventor had won a Nobel Prize for its discovery. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral damage to fish, birds, and other wildlife. Silent Spring was a chilling indictment of DDT and its effects, which were lasting, widespread, and lethal. Published in 1962, Silent Spring shocked the public and forced the government to take action-despite a withering attack on Carson from the chemicals industry. The book awakened the world to the heedless contamination of the environment and eventually led to the establishment of the EPA and to the banning of DDT and a host of related pesticides. By drawing frightening parallels between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive fallout from nuclear testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, On a Farther Shore reveals a shy yet passionate woman more at home in the natural world than in the literary one that embraced her. William Souder also writes sensitively of Carson's romantic friendship with Dorothy Freeman, and of her death from cancer in 1964. This extraordinary new biography captures the essence of one of the great reformers of the twentieth century. ' 
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von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.' 
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West, Morris L, Shoes of the Fisherman, 1988256 pages Amazon customer review: '. . . What makes this book and its attendant film so remarkable is that it was released a full decade before the election of another pope from the communist block. In the 1960s it was considered very shocking to consider a non-Italian pope, much less one coming from behind the Iron Curtain. This of course had the prophetic ring when Karol (not Kiril) from Poland became pope. Another prophetic instance is in the ecclesiastical trial of the radical theologian -- during his defense, this theologian even uses the words that later theologians would use, who were silenced by the Roman order, and who finally had to leave the church to remain true to their convictions in some instances. . . . ' Fr Kurt Messick 
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Holton, Gerald, "How the Jefferson Physical Laboratory came to be", Physics Today, 37, 12, December 1984, page 32. 'The first building in America dedicated to physics opened its doors 100 years ago: “furnished in the plainest possible manner, but provided with everything which intelligent forethought could plan.”'. back

Aquinas 20, Summa I, 3, 7: Whether God is altogether simple? , 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Wikipedia, Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican (abbreviated to ACDF for Archivio Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei), commonly referred to as the Archive of the Inquisition (or more fully the Archive of the Inquisition and Index), contains the Catholic Church's documents dealing with doctrinal and theological issues related to church teaching. It also contains information on political trials that were carried out when the papacy had temporal power over the Papal States.' back

Art Jipson and Paul J. Becker, White nationalism, born in the USA, is now a global terror threat, The recent massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand is the latest confirmation that white supremacy is a danger to democratic societies across the globe. Despite President Donald Trump’s suggestion that white nationalist terrorism is not a major problem, recent data from the United Nations, University of Chicago and other sources show the opposite. As more people embrace a xenophobic and anti-immigrant worldview, it is fueling hostility and violence toward those deemed “outsiders” – whether because of their religion, skin color or national origin.' back

Ataraxia - Wikipedia, Ataraxia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Ataraxia (ἀταραξία, literally, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", "equanimity", or "tranquillity") is a Greek term first used in Ancient Greek philosophy by Pyrrho and subsequently Epicurus and the Stoics for a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry. In non-philosophical usage, the term was used to describe the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle. Achieving ataraxia is a common goal for Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, but the role and value of ataraxia within each philosophy varies depending their philosophical theories. The mental disturbances that prevent one from achieving ataraxia vary among the philosophies, and each philosophy has a different understanding as to how to achieve ataraxia.' back

Bohr model - Wikipedia, Bohr model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In atomic physics, the Rutherford–Bohr model or Bohr model, introduced by Niels Bohr in 1913, depicts the atom as a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the solar system, but with attraction provided by electrostatic forces rather than gravity' back

Born rule - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There have been many attempts to derive the Born rule from the other assumptions of quantum mechanics, with inconclusive results. . . . The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator A with discrete spectrum is measured in a system with normalized wave function (see bra-ket notation), then the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues λ of A, and the probability of measuring a given eigenvalue λ_i will equal <ψ|P_i|ψ> where P_i is the projection onto the eigenspace of A corresponding to λ_i'. back

Chris Allen, Extreme far right: 'pick'n'mix' ideologies and direct messaging online make for a deadly new combination, ' While much has been made of the Islamophobic nature of the attacks, a deeper look at the suspect and his manifesto afford an insight into how the extreme right wing is not only increasingly dependent upon social media but would also seem to be moving away from rather more fixed and traditional ideologies.' back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder-decoder or, less commonly, compressor-decompressor.' back

Copying Beethoven - Wikipedia, Copying Beethoven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Copying Beethoven is a 2006 dramatic film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Agnieszka Holland which gives a fictional take on the triumphs and heartaches of Ludwig van Beethoven's last years.' back

Crowdsourcing.org, Croudfunding, 'Financial contributions from online investors, sponsors or donors to fund for-profit or non-profit initiatives or enterprises. Crowdfunding is an approach to raising capital for new projects and businesses by soliciting contributions from a large number of stakeholders following three types of crowdfunding models: (1) Donations, Philanthropy and Sponsorship where there is no expected financial return, (2) Lending and (3) Investment in exchange for equity, profit or revenue sharing.' back

Decree against Communism - Wikipedia, Decree against Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Decree against Communism is a 1949 Catholic Church document (by Pope Pius XII) which excommunicates all Catholics collaborating in communist organizations. The document resulted in one of the largest formal excommunications in the history of the Catholic Church (it could include more than several million Catholics).' back

Dirac equation - Wikipedia, Dirac equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1⁄2 massive particles such as electrons and quarks, for which parity is a symmetry, and is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It accounted for the fine details of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way.' back

Epoche - Wikipedia, Epoche - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Epoché (ἐποχή epokhē, "suspension") is an ancient Greek term typically translated as "suspension of judgment" but also as "withholding of assent".The term is used in slightly different ways among the various schools of Hellenistic philosophy. The Pyrrhonists developed the concept of "epoché" to describe the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended in order to induce a state of ataraxia (freedom from worry and anxiety). The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus gives this definition: "Epoché is a state of the intellect on account of which we neither deny nor affirm anything." This concept is similarly employed in Academic Skepticism, but without the objective of ataraxia.' back

Feynman, Leighton & Sands FLP III:01, Chapter 1: Quantum Behaviour, 'The gradual accumulation of information about atomic and small-scale behavior during the first quarter of the 20th century, which gave some indications about how small things do behave, produced an increasing confusion which was finally resolved in 1926 and 1927 by Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Born. They finally obtained a consistent description of the behavior of matter on a small scale. We take up the main features of that description in this chapter.' back

Glyph - Wikipedia, Glyph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In typography, a glyph . . . is an elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, intended to represent a readable character for the purposes of writing and thereby expressing thoughts, ideas and concepts. As such, glyphs are considered to be unique marks that collectively add up to the spelling of a word, or otherwise contribute to a specific meaning of what is written, with that meaning dependent on cultural and social usage..' back

Habeas Corpus Act 1679 - Wikipedia, Habeas Corpus Act 1679 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Habeas Corpus Act 1679 is an Act of the Parliament of England (31 Cha. 2 c. 2)[2] passed during the reign of King Charles II by what became known as the Habeas Corpus Parliament to define and strengthen the ancient prerogative writ of habeas corpus, a procedural device to force the courts to examine the lawfulness of a prisoner's detention.' back

Homer - Wikipedia, Homer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the Western classical tradition, Homer (. . . Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος Hómēros) is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature. When he lived is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC, while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BC. Modern researchers appear to place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC.' back

Inflation (cosmology) - Wikipedia, Inflation (cosmology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds. Following the inflationary period, the Universe continues to expand, but at a less rapid rate.' . . . The detailed particle physics mechanism responsible for inflation is not known. The basic inflationary paradigm is accepted by most scientists, who believe a number of predictions have been confirmed by observation; however, a substantial minority of scientists dissent from this position.' back

Justin Romberg, Nyquist Theorem, The Connections Project, Rice University: 'The fundamental theorem of DSP [digital signal processing]' back

Louis de Broglie, Radiation: Waves and Quanta, Note of Louis de Broglie, presented by Jean Perrin. (Translated from Comptes rendus, Vol. 177, 1923, pp. 507-510) back

Malcolm Jack, From Dresden on the 50th Anniversary of 'Slaughterhouse-Five, ' Claiming around 25,000 lives late in World War II, the Allied firebombing raids on Dresden whipped up an inferno so fierce it sucked the oxygen from all but the most subterranean of shelters and destroyed practically everything that would burn. Vonnegut would later compare the sound of bombs stomping across the earth overhead to the footsteps of giants. Put to work by his German captors disinterring corpses from the rubble, he would one day write with characteristic black comedy that the hideous task resembled “a terribly elaborate Easter egg hunt.” ' back

Michael Gerson, Politics is religion, and the right is getting ready for end tims, ' As politics has become a religion in so many lives, political discourse has taken on theological overtones. I am not referring to President Trump’s accusation of a “witch hunt,” which places the FBI in the role of Puritan divines. This is merely an absurd metaphor. What I am talking about is the appropriation — really, the profanation — of religious ideas to serve ideological purposes.' back

Myfany Turpin, Brenda I. Croft, Clint Bracknell and Felicity Meakins, Aboriginal Australia's smash hit that went viral, ' In a time before radio or even gramophones, songs were shared between Aboriginal groups at large social gatherings. Some songs were so popular they spread enormous distances. One such song known as Wanji-wanji has travelled some thousands of kilometres. Incredibly, the lyrics have remained unchanged over this distance and the past 150 years it has been sung. The song has been passed between dozens of language groups who sang the lyrics and the rhythm identically, but with varying melodies and under the guise of different names.' back

Normal distribution - Wikipedia, Normal distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Normal distributions are extremely important in statistics, and are often used in the natural and social sciences for real-valued random variables whose distributions are not known.[1][2] One reason for their popularity is the central limit theorem, which states that, under mild conditions, the mean of a large number of random variables independently drawn from the same distribution is distributed approximately normally, irrespective of the form of the original distribution.' back

Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the field of digital signal processing, the sampling theorem is a fundamental bridge between continuous-time signals (often called "analog signals") and discrete-time signals (often called "digital signals"). It establishes a sufficient condition for a sample rate that permits a discrete sequence of samples to capture all the information from a continuous-time signal of finite bandwidth.' back

P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, P versus NP problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'An answer to the P = NP question would determine whether problems that can be verified in polynomial time, like the subset-sum problem, can also be solved in polynomial time. If it turned out that P ≠ NP, it would mean that there are problems in NP (such as NP-complete problems) that are harder to compute than to verify: they could not be solved in polynomial time, but the answer could be verified in polynomial time.' back

Parmenides - Wikipedia, Parmenides - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, his only known work is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In it, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In the Way of Truth, he explained how reality is one; change is impossible; and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In the Way of Opinion, he explained the world of appearances, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of western philosophy.' back

Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics is a description of quantum theory which generalizes the action principle of classical mechanics. It replaces the classical notion of a single, unique trajectory for a system with a sum, or functional integral, over an infinity of possible trajectories to compute a quantum amplitude. . . . This formulation has proved crucial to the subsequent development of theoretical physics, since it provided the basis for the grand synthesis of the 1970s which unified quantum field theory with statistical mechanics. . . . ' back

Pauli exclusion principle - Wikipedia, Pauli exclusion principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle that no two identical fermions (particles with half-integer spin) may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement is that the total wave function for two identical fermions is anti-symmetric with respect to exchange of the particles. The principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925.' back

Peter Bradshaw, The Fall review - Mary Decker and Zola Budd reunite for dramatic finale, ' The title could be hinting at a loss of innocence, and yet there was no innocence to be lost in the grubby world of 1980s Olympic sport. This gripping documentary shows how the rivalry of track stars Mary Decker and Zola Budd at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics can be greeted with nothing other than a wince: two young women caught in the cross-currents of politics, bad timing and bad faith.' back

Piotr H. Kosicki, Solidarity Lost, ' Political scientist David Ost has written movingly of the “defeat of Solidarity” in post-Communist Poland, yet what we see in 2019 takes us beyond the story of post-Communist countries’ neglect of their industrial and agricultural laborers. As the largest nation of post-Communist Europe celebrates the centenary of the restoration of its national sovereignty, Poland is failing to rise to the challenge of preserving the values forged in its struggles against the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.' back

Planck constant - Wikipedia, Planck constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Since energy and mass are equivalent, the Planck constant also relates mass to frequency. By 2017, the Planck constant had been measured with sufficient accuracy in terms of the SI base units, that it was central to replacing the metal cylinder, called the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK), that had defined the kilogram since 1889. . . . For this new definition of the kilogram, the Planck constant, as defined by the ISO standard, was set to 6.626 070 150 × 10-34 J⋅s exactly. ' back

Plato - Wikipedia, Plato - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Plato (. . . Greek: . . . Plátōn, "broad" 428/427 BC – 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.' back

Quaternion - Wikipedia, Quaternion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, the quaternions are a number system that extends the complex numbers. They were first described by Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. A feature of quaternions is that multiplication of two quaternions is noncommutative. Hamilton defined a quaternion as the quotient of two directed lines in a three-dimensional space or equivalently as the quotient of two vectors.' back

Robert Breunig, The government is right - immigration helps us rather than harms us, ' In announcing a cut in Australia’s migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000 per year, federal population minister Alan Tudge launched an all-out defence of immigration as a driver of economic prosperity. It has not only boosted gross domestic product and budget revenue, as would be expected when with more people, but also also living standards – measured as GDP per person.' back

Singlet state - Wikipedia, Singlet state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In quantum mechanics, a singlet state usually refers to a system in which all electrons are paired. The term 'singlet' originally meant a linked set of particles whose net angular momentum is zero, that is, whose overall spin quantum number s = 0 {\displaystyle s=0} . As a result, there is only one spectral line of a singlet state. In contrast, a doublet state contains one unpaired electron and shows splitting of spectral lines into a doublet; and a triplet state has two unpaired electrons and shows threefold splitting of spectral lines.' back

Spinor - Wikipedia, Spinor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In geometry and physics, spinors are elements of a (complex) vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space.[nb 2] Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation.[nb 3] When a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, however, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used: unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360°. ' back

Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Critical Density, ' Balanced on a knife edge between Universes with high and low densities of matter, there exists a Universe where parallel light rays remain parallel. This is referred to as a flat geometry, and the density is called the ‘critical density’. In a critical density Universe, the expansion is halted only after an infinite time. The critical density for the Universe is approximately 10^-26 kg/m3 (or 10 hydrogen atoms per cubic metre) . . . ' back

Timothy Bella, A Syrian mother ptotectd her daughter during the war. Her work exposed Assad's atrocities, ' AUSTIN — Laying on her bed in Aleppo, Waad al-Kateab greeted Sama, her giggly newborn daughter, like she did most mornings, fearful of arrests, bombings and death. The Syrian mother wondered how she could bring Sama into a world filled with terror and war.' back

Trial by ordeal - Wikipedia, Trial by ordeal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting him to an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. Classically, the test is one of life or death and the proof of innocence is survival. In some cases, the accused is considered innocent if he escapes injury or if his injuries heal. .. . Priestly cooperation in trials by fire and water was forbidden by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and replaced by compurgation, later by inquisition.[1] Trials by ordeal became rarer over the Late Middle Ages, often replaced by confessions extracted under torture, but the practice was discontinued only in the 16th century.' back

W. F. McGrew et al, Atomic clock performance enabling geodesy below the centimetre level, ' The passage of time is tracked by counting oscillations of a frequency reference, such as Earth’s revolutions or swings of a pendulum. By referencing atomic transitions, frequency (and thus time) can be measured more precisely than any other physical quantity, with the current generation of optical atomic clocks reporting fractional performance below the 10⁻¹⁷ level. However, the theory of relativity prescribes that the passage of time is not absolute, but is affected by an observer’s reference frame. Consequently, clock measurements exhibit sensitivity to relative velocity, acceleration and gravity potential. Here we demonstrate local optical clock measurements that surpass the current ability to account for the gravitational distortion of space-time across the surface of Earth. In two independent ytterbium optical lattice clocks, we demonstrate unprecedented values of three fundamental benchmarks of clock performance. In units of the clock frequency, we report systematic uncertainty of 1.4 × 10⁻¹⁸, measurement instability of 3.2 × 10⁻¹⁹ and reproducibility characterized by ten blinded frequency comparisons, yielding a frequency difference of [−7 ± (5)stat ± (8)sys] × 10⁻¹⁹, where ‘stat’ and ‘sys’ indicate statistical and systematic uncertainty, respectively. Although sensitivity to differences in gravity potential could degrade the performance of the clocks as terrestrial standards of time, this same sensitivity can be used as a very sensitive probe of geopotential. Near the surface of Earth, clock comparisons at the 1 × 10⁻¹⁸ level provide a resolution of one centimetre along the direction of gravity, so the performance of these clocks should enable geodesy beyond the state-of-the-art level. These optical clocks could further be used to explore geophysical phenomena, detect gravitational waves, test general relativity and search for dark matter.' back