Operation Sigma Sigma

The Sigma is an experimental glider developed in Britain from 1966 by a team led by Nicholas Goodhart. After disappointing performance during flight testing the Sigma was passed on to a Canadian group which carried out modifications, making the Sigma more competitive.

Design and development

Designed to compete in the 1970 World Championships, the team aimed to develop a wing that would climb well through a high lift coefficient and a large wing area, but equally had the "maximum possible reduction of area for cruise at low lift coefficients". At the same time for the minimum possible drag they aimed for "extensive" laminar flow. To achieve this they employed flaps that would alter both wing area and wing camber. Based on analysis of the nature of thermals encountered in cross-country flying, they reasoned that by having a slow turning circle, their sailplane could stay close to the central (and strongest) part of the thermal and gain maximum benefit.

Its unusual feature is its ability to vary its wing area using Fowler flaps. It had been tried before by the Hannover Akaflieg in 1938 with their AFH-4, the South African Beatty-Johl BJ-2 Assegai and the SZD Zefir gliders.

Sigma baryon

The Sigma baryons are a family of subatomic hadron particles which have a +2, +1 or −1 elementary charge or are neutral. They are baryons containing three quarks: two up and/or down quarks, and one third quark, which can be either a strange (symbols Σ+, Σ0, Σ−), a charm (symbols Σ++
c, Σ+
c, Σ0
c), a bottom (symbols Σ+
b, Σ0
b, Σ−
b) or a top (symbols Σ++
t, Σ+
t, Σ0
t) quark. However, the top Sigmas are not expected to be observed as the Standard Model predicts the mean lifetime of top quarks to be roughly 6975500000000000000♠5×10⁻²⁵ s. This is about 20 times shorter than the timescale for strong interactions, and therefore it does not form hadrons.

List

The symbols encountered in these lists are: I (isospin), J (total angular momentum), P (parity), u (up quark), d (down quark), s (strange quark), c (charm quark), t (top quark), b (bottom quark), Q (charge), B (baryon number), S (strangeness), C (charmness), B′ (bottomness), T (topness), as well as other subatomic particles (hover for name).

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986.Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995. Today, it is used in many industrial sectors.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization, who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has specific value targets, for example: reduce process cycle time, reduce pollution, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and increase profits.

The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defective features per million opportunities). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a by-word for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.

Animal

Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). All animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently, at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance.

Most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals are divided into various sub-groups, some of which are: vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish); molluscs (clams, oysters, octopuses, squid, snails); arthropods (millipedes, centipedes, insects, spiders, scorpions, crabs, lobsters, shrimp); annelids (earthworms, leeches); sponges; and jellyfish.

Etymology

The word "animal" comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, having soul or living being. In everyday non-scientific usage the word excludes humans – that is, "animal" is often used to refer only to non-human members of the kingdom Animalia; often, only closer relatives of humans such as mammals, or mammals and other vertebrates, are meant. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans.

Animals (Pink Floyd album)

Animals is the tenth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd, released in January 1977. A concept album, it provides a scathing critique of the social-political conditions of late 1970s Britain, and presents a marked change in musical style from their earlier work. Animals was recorded at the band's studio, Britannia Row, in London, but its production was punctuated by the early signs of discord that three years later would culminate in keyboardist Richard Wright leaving the band. The album's cover image, a pig floating between two chimneys on Battersea Power Station, was conceived by bassist and writer Roger Waters, and photographed by long-time collaborators Hipgnosis.

The album was released to generally positive reviews in the United Kingdom, where it reached number 2. It was also a success in the United States, reaching number 3 on the Billboard 200, and although it scored on the American charts for only six months, steady sales have resulted in its certification by the RIAA at four times platinum. The size of the venues on the band's In the Flesh Tour, and an incident in which Waters spat at a fan, prompted him to conceive the band's subsequent album, The Wall.

Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986

The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, sometimes referred to as ASPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (1986 c. 14) passed in 1986, which regulates the use of animals used for research in the UK. The Act permits studies to be conducted using animals for procedures such as breeding genetically modified animals, medical and veterinary advances, education, environmental toxicology and includes procedures requiring vivisection, if certain criteria are met. Revised legislation came into force on January 1st 2013. The original act related to the 1986 EU Directive 86/609/EEC which was updated and replaced by EU Directive 2010/63/EU

In 2002, a Government select committee inquiry described the Act as the "...tightest system of regulation in the world" in relation to the regulation of using animals for research.

Background

Prior to ASPA, the use of animals in the UK was regulated by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which enforced a licensing and inspection system for vivisection. Animal cruelty was previously regulated by the Protection of Animals Act 1911 (now largely repealed) and more recently by the Animal Welfare Act 2006, both of which outlaw the causing of "unnecessary suffering". Specific exemptions apply to experiments licensed under the 1986 Act.