Academic literature on the topic 'Hoover Medal'

In January 1975, the magazine Popular Electronics trumpeted the beginnings of a revolution. “Project Breakthrough,” the cover said: “World’s First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models.” Inside, a six-page article described the Altair, an unassembled computer that could be ordered from MITS, a company in Albuquerque originally founded to sell radio transmitters for controlling model airplanes. To the uninitiated, it didn’t look like much of a revolution. For $397 plus shipping, a hobbyist or computer buff could get a power supply, a metal case with lights and switches on the front panel, and a set of integrated circuit chips and other components that had to be soldered into place. When everything was assembled, a user gave the computer instructions by flipping the panel’s seventeen switches one at a time in a carefully calculated order; loading a relatively simple program might involve thousands of flips. MITS had promised that the Altair could be hooked up to a Teletype machine for its input, but the circuit boards needed for the hookup wouldn’t be available for a number of months. To read the computer’s output, a user had to interpret the on/off pattern of flashing lights; it would be more than a year before MITS would offer an interface board to transform the output into text or figures on a television screen. And the computer had no software. A user had to write the programs himself in arcane computer code or else borrow the efforts of other enthusiasts. One observer of the early computer industry summed up the experience like this: “You buy the Altair, you have to build it, then you have to build other things to plug into it to make it work. You are a weird-type person. Because only weird-type people sit in kitchens and basements and places all hours of the night, soldering things to boards to make machines go flickety-flock.” But despite its shortcomings, several thousand weird-type people bought the Altair within a few months of its appearance. What inspired and intrigued them was the semiconductor chip at the heart of the computer.

A comprehensive programme of archaeometric research into the chemical composition and manufacturing technology of Early Iron Age artefacts discovered in Świbie, Upper Silesia, has yielded a number of detailed observations and findings. Sixty-six artefacts from a collection of several hundred large bronzes were targeted for study. Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy with micro-area composition analysis were used. In selected cases, non-destructive analysis was carried out by digital X-ray radiography. The study was preceded by macroscopic observation of the artefacts. It was shown that most of the large ring ornaments were made from castings subsequently subjected to numerous forging (reforging and shaping) and finishing treatments. Some of the wares, such as the massive ankle rings, retained many of the characteristics of the original cast, indicating that the finishing treatment was only applied when necessary due to the nature of the product (e.g. visual qualities). Decoration was applied using various techniques, often used in combination with each other (e.g. designing a decoration on a wax model and correcting it on the finished product). It was demonstrated that the characteristic constrictions found on the inside of the massive twisted-bar ankle rings of the Upper Silesia and Sącz (Stary Sącz) types could not be the effect of wear and tear, but evidence of intentional reforging, most likely aimed at creating a place to attach an organic strap to fix the ornament in place on the leg. The research has also identified a new category of imports from the circum-Alpine or Mediterranean areas, namely necklaces with a hooked clasp. The extraordinarily precise ornamental technique observed on the necklace, long known in the literature, from grave 102 (in which other imported luxury goods were also found), required the use of a tool in the type of a tap or a threader, and it has never before been identified in an Early Iron Age context in Poland. Above all, however, these studies made it possible to answer the research questions regarding the sample. The first question concerned the raw material and technological variation of the collection across functional and stylistic categories: Did the objects produced and/or used by the population using the cemetery differ in chemical composition of the alloy and manufacturing technique according to function or style? Although the raw material composition was quite similar for the majority of the artefacts (classic Cu-Sn tin bronze), it emerged that some of them had a slightly different composition, most notably an elevated lead content (above 1.5%, exceptionally up to 9.5%), and that this was not coincidental. More often than not, these objects, such as the necklace from grave 217 or the openwork knife handle fitting from grave 495, demanded castings that, due to their small thickness in the mould, required a special alloy with improved castability. This was not required with massive bronzes or those meant for forging sheet metal for the production of coiled ornaments ; these wares are usually characterised by a low proportion of intentionally added lead as an alloying component. No such consistency can be seen in the manufacture of small ornaments such as buttons or spiral pendants, presumably produced on a day-to-day basis from currently available raw material or from recycled raw material. A satisfactory answer was also obtained to the second main question: Whether it was practised to furnish the deceased with sets uniform in style and raw material (possibly including objects produced especially for the funerary ceremony), or whether the objects amassed in the grave were made from raw material from different sources and at different stages of the buried person’s life. Proceeding from a comparison of all the bronzes from three rich burials (graves 102, N=11; 124, N=12; 574, N=9), it was concluded that they were certainly not furnished with complete ceremonial costumes prepared by one workshop, from one batch of raw material. The only objects that they can be considered sets in terms of both style and workshop are pairs of large bronzes (such as ankle rings or massive bracelets), which were most often made from a homogeneous raw material and probably functioned together from manufacture to deposition in the grave. In the group of small bronzes, this contextual approach (as well as the functional one) confirmed a greater range of raw material patterns.

In May, 2007 the Irish Central Statistics Office embarked on an Education Outreach Programme. The programme is driven by the desire to increase the awareness and effective use of statistics in Ireland. Educating CSO data customers is seen as a key driver in this goal. Since 2007, the CSO has fostered key partnerships at a national and international level to develop and implement a number of key projects. Seminar Series, Statistical Liaison groups, Oireachtas briefings, CensusAtSchool, the John Hooper Medal For Statistics, the Professional Diploma in Official Statistics for Policy Evaluation, t

Detailed knowledge of a coolant flow in a fuel assembly of a reactor core has always been a major factor in the design of new nuclear systems. In this regard, traditionally adopted subchannel analysis codes cannot take into account local phenomena, which are quite essential. On the other hand, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) is being recognized as a valuable research tool for thermal-hydraulics phenomenon in the fuel assembly geometries. Because of the high Reynolds number and geometric complexities, the practical CFD calculations are mostly limited to pragmatic Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stok