Showing posts with label Factoids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Factoids. Show all posts

Saturday, November 9, 2013

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "Yeomans' Top Ten Asteroid Factoids"

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper" 
 
Just so you know that you're not alone in the universe:  world or words:
Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at JPL, keeps a watchful eye on near-Earth objects -- asteroids, comets and other space rocks. Yeomans heads a group charged by NASA to watch for objects whose orbits bring them close to Earth. He's pulled together his top ten asteroid factoids.
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 The top factoids about asteroids    Today Tech

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 Qualitative Testing Factoid Sheet by Adrian Dingle's Chemistry Pages
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Should seniors get genetic factoid tests for unproven theories regarding choice?   There's now a genetic test for the ability not to make the same mistake twice, or rather the same unhealthy choices. DNA testing for ancestry may also offer genetic testing for various types of "factoid tests" based on numerous genetic studies.
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 DNAFactoids
       Have some fun with your DNA Factoid Complete Bundle Pack      $149.00
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 FTDNA's autosomal test is now the same price as both AncestryDNA and 23andme. However, you can do an autosomal transfer from 23andme or AncestryDNA for $69. FTDNA does regular discounts and there are discounts for surname, region, and haplogroup projects. Once a customer, some upgrades qualify for a large discount. It is also one of the few companies to offer individual SNP, STR, and other tests. It offers Factoid tests, but most of them are included in 23andme's test. Not sure they test the same genes or rely on the same research. FTDNA also offers a full range of Y-DNA and mtDNA that are great for genealogy.

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 Factoid tests should generally test only the major facts. Even the worst of worst English teachers do not tell you to memorize a pointless line or a minor character. Don't skip lectures. The lecturer should indicate what factoid he wants you to memorize if he's really doing it that way.
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 Factoids Part 1

Explore the world of color with these amazing "factoids" about color. You'll find unusual snippets of information from the world of nature, vision, psychology, business, and from all dimensions of our lives.

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 From the Top's Facebook Wall
Here's a neat factoid about Mozart. Do you hear colors in music?

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3BL Media:
 Trish:  Let me bring up another little factoid from the NAHB:  Women directly purchase or have controlling influence in the purchase of 91% of all new homes.   So women (who are twice as likely to want green products) are dependent upon men (who largely don’t buy into green) to build their homes.  Are the odds are stacked against a woman getting the green home of her dreams?

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 NOTE:  Militarily speaking, the USA sees FACTOIDS as "Good" and "BAD" mixed in with the Correct bits........... 
West Point Academy 
The goal of the organization is to identify a terrorist attack based on bits of information distributed around the organization. After ten minutes of the one hour experiment, all of the correct information has been issued to the organization. Among the correct bits of information, or factoids, are also distributed false factoids. Each entity receives four factoids, and they must corroborate within the organization to come up with the correct arrangement of who, what, where, and when.

Snowden, where are you on West Point's interpretation?
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 FACTOIDS:"Models and Tools for Analysis and Secure Exchange of Sensor-Collected Data"
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In this paper, we study the problem of automatically annotating the factoids present in collective discourse. Factoids are in formation units that are shared between instances of collective discourse and may have many different ways of being realized in words. Our approach divides this problem into two steps, using a graph-based approach for each step: (1) factoid discovery, finding groups of words that correspond to the same factoid, and (2) factoid assignment, using these groups of words to mark collective discourse units that contain the respective factoids.

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We present a new approach to intrinsic summary evaluation, based on initial experiments in van Halteren and Teufel (2003), which combines two novel aspects:  comparison of information content (rather than string similarity) in gold standard and system summary, measured in shared atomic information units which we call factoids, and comparison to more than one gold standard summary (in our data: 20 and 50 summaries respectively)

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100  Chevy Factoids
History of Chevy 
1. Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Company on November 3, 1911. Chevy celebrates its 100th birthday on November 3, 2011.

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An interesting thing to notice in this example is that allocation order is quite different from JIT compilation order. In fact, the first thing to be allocated is the Exception object for out of memory errors! Many delightful factoids can be gleaned by examining execution traces.
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Diabetic Factoids
Please feel free to post questions for The Neuropathy Association and Dr. Levine that you'd like as relates to the focus of this Facebook chat: DIABETIC NEUROPATHY. You can also comment on other participants’ posts and comments. Dr. Levine will be asking questions and sharing factoids on diabetic neuropathy too. And, be sure to chat with each other as well, make some new friends. 
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Sunday, November 3, 2013

Myth Buster: Kinder Morgan (CEPA) Facts or Factoids

Kinder Morgan, supposedly, doesn't believe in "Myths" because they have their own way of explaining to the Public the "Facts" on the benefits and movement of their resources.

Fact is, Kinder Morgan and twelve of their brethren Petroleum giants, along with their Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), believe strictly in "Factoids".  Factoid files are neatly stacked on their Library shelves:

Fact:                  http://www.cepa.com/library/factoids

For your reference, one definition of a "Factoid"  is in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary:
"an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact"  

Fact:               Factoids defined by Wikipedia:
A factoid is a questionable or spurious (unverified, false, or fabricated) statement presented as a fact, but without supporting evidence. The word can also be used to describe a particularly insignificant or novel fact, in the absence of much relevant context.   The word is defined by the Compact Oxford English Dictionary as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".

Factoids may give rise to, or arise from, common misconceptions and urban legends.

A Kinder Morgan Website asks "Did you know" (without a question mark) and then proceeds to lay the "Facts" out cold,      hard, and fast.

3 million

Approximately three million barrels of crude oil travel through Canada’s crude oil pipeline network every day, enough to fill more than 475 million one-litre milk cartons or almost 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools.   Learn More

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URL Fact:   Top LEFT corner:

http://www.cepa.com/library/factoids

 Facts   

$83.5 billion

Value of Canadian crude oil and natural gas exports in 2012 — most of which was transported by pipeline

94%

Percentage of transportation demand in Canada supplied by petroleum products

4,200

The number of rail cars needed to transport the 3 million barrels of crude oil transported each day by pipeline in Canada

More than half

The homes in Canada are heated by natural gas

5.5 litres

The amount of liquid spilled per million litres transported by pipeline in Canada between 2002 and 2011

3 million

Barrels of crude oil transported by transmission pipelines in Canada every day — the equivalent of 200 Olympic sized swimming pools  (other mediums using Olympic Sized Pools)

97%

The percentage of Canadian natural gas and crude oil production transported by transmission pipelines

More than two thirds

Of Canada’s energy demand is met by natural gas or products made from crude oil

2.5

Number of times Canada’s natural gas and liquid transmission pipelines would circle the earth if laid end-to-end

30 – 35

Number of days it takes for oil to travel by pipeline from Alberta to southern Ontario

More than 60%

Percentage of Canadian natural gas production transported by pipeline to US markets in 2011

Up to 40 km per hour

Speed natural gas moves through a pipeline

99.9994%

Percentage of liquid product transported safely by pipelines between 2002 and 2011

3 teaspoons

The liquid spilled from pipelines in Canada over the past ten years is equivalent to three teaspoons dripped out of a gasoline nozzle over the course of 50 fill-ups of 50 litres each

75 kilometers

The length of train that would be required to transport the 3 million barrels of crude oil transported by pipeline in Canada every day

18 metres

The size of the permanent right-of-way for a large diameter transmission pipeline

500 BC

The first recorded use of pipelines to transport natural gas — the pipelines were constructed of bamboo

830,000 km

Estimate of Canada’s underground natural gas and liquids pipeline network (gathering, transmission and delivery lines)

Fact:        Google Search Criteria:   factoids  CEPA

Fact:   CEPA Membership:

Monday, January 21, 2013

TMI: A new Measurement of Volume: Olympic Size swimming pool

TMI

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This morning, the Press is reporting on "Canada not ready to dispose of mercury-laden light bulbs" - Vancouver Sun  from   The Canadian Press  Dean Beeby 

Mercury-laden CFL:
Snip
Beginning next January, a new regulation will effectively ban the sale of standard incandescent bulbs in favour of energy-efficient versions, most of which contain mercury.

So-called compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, will also enter the waste stream as they break or burn out, many destined for landfills where their harmful mercury can get into the water.

Environment Canada (Pages 3 and 11) says the MERCURY contained in a typical thermometer can contaminate five Olympic-size swimming pools to toxic levels.                                         Snip

Imagine that, one Typical thermometer can contaminate FIVE OLYMPIC-SIZE SWIMMING POOLS!   There's no mention, however, of how many Compact Fluorescent lamps can fit into a Typical thermometer............
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From Christy Clark's Minister of Environment, Terry Lake's (fitting last name) desktop:

Did you know that the average British Columbian uses about 490 litres of water each day? If you include the water that is embedded in the food you eat, the clothes you wear and the products you use every day, your “water footprint” may be over 6,000 litres a day. Over the course of a year, that’s almost a full Olympic-sized swimming pool of water per person!  - Living Water Smart
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Maple Ridge uses 4,200 full Olympic sized swimming pools per year, that's 10.5 million cubic meters   .... population 69,000 to 75,000.
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Olympic-size swimming pool is the type of swimming pool used in the Olympic Games, where the race course is 50 metres in length and 25 metres in width. - Wikipedia


Success story

Approximately 2.9 million litres of municipal drinking water is conserved annually with a very basic pipe configuration.  This exceeds the volume of water required to fill an Olympic size Swimming Pool.  Page 4 of 4

There are Three watersheds (drainage and catchment areas) in Metro Vancouver Water District, and whereas they are different in land area, the volume of water is essentially the same.  Population: 2,000,000... Two Million......

Capilano Lake held back by Cleveland Dam....... from an earlier Post.

The math should be easy here, based upon Minister Lake's calculations...... of one full Olympic-sized per person...   Maple Ridge's population versus 4,200 pools....

2,000,000 X 1 = 2,000,000 Olympic Size swimming pools

However:
ONE THERMOMETER can contaminate to toxic levels FIVE Olympic Size Swimming Pools.

400,000 thermometers would be needed to contaminate 2 million Olympic swimming pools

One/Third of Four Hundred Thousand ...... approximately 12,000 thermometers per watershed.

2,400 visitors carrying five thermometers each......

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TMI


Could someone please explain why the Federal and Provincial governments are introducing a product that will ... allow terrorists  to contaminate our drinking water with mercury without the means to dispose of the toxic material (mercury), to stop "them", or us?   This insanity must STOP

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 UPDATE  September 26, 2013

The Canadian Press

Published Sunday, April 1, 2012 7:53PM EDT

OTTAWA - Enough nuclear waste to fill more than a hundred Olympic-sized swimming pools could be buried in an underground chamber near the Ottawa River.

The federal government is eyeing the site of the Chalk River nuclear reactor, 160 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, as a radioactive waste site.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. says 267,000 cubic metres of low- and medium-level nuclear waste is now stored above-ground in metal containers at the Chalk River site.
   
The Crown corporation is looking at building an enormous depository 500 to 1,000 metres underground to bury the detritus of six decades of nuclear testing at the Chalk River site.


UPDATE October 4, 2013

Sir Adam Beck Generating Stations downstream at a rate that would fill an Olympic sizedswimming pool every five seconds
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UPDATE November 3, 2013

Trans Mountain Pipeline aka Kinder Morgan   "Did you Know":

Approximately three million barrels of crude oil travel through Canada’s crude oil pipeline network every day, enough to fill more than 475 million one-litre milk cartons or almost 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Factoids
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UPDATE  November 13, 2013

 Natural gas industry accused of illegal water use in B.C.
Environmental groups say Encana should have to pay for water used in fracking process

The environmental groups say as Encana proceeded with the fracking process to extract natural gas from underground reserves, it drew 880 Olympic swimming pools worth of water over three years from the Kiskatinaw River, which supplies drinking water to the city of Dawson Creek.