Nitric acid

Nitric acid (HNO₃), also known as aqua fortis and spirit of niter, is a highly corrosive mineral acid.

The pure compound is colorless, but older samples tend to acquire a yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen and water. Most commercially available nitric acid has a concentration of 68% in water. When the solution contains more than 86% HNO₃, it is referred to as fuming nitric acid. Depending on the amount of nitrogen dioxide present, fuming nitric acid is further characterized as white fuming nitric acid or red fuming nitric acid, at concentrations above 95%.

Nitric acid is the primary reagent used for nitration – the addition of a nitro group, typically to an organic molecule. While some resulting nitro compounds are shock- and thermally-sensitive explosives, a few are stable enough to be used in munitions and demolition, while others are still more stable and used as pigments in inks and dyes. Nitric acid is also commonly used as a strong oxidizing agent.

Physical and chemical properties

Mind (disambiguation)

A mind is the set of cognitive faculties that enables memory, consciousness, perception, thinking and judgement.

The term mind may also refer to:

Mind (The Culture)

In Iain M. Banks' Culture series, most larger starships, some inhabited planets and all orbitals have their own Minds: sentient, hyperintelligent machines originally built by biological species, which have evolved, redesigned themselves, and become many times more intelligent than their original creators.

These Minds have become an indispensable part of the Culture, enabling much of its post-scarcity amenities by planning and automating society (controlling day-to-day administration with mere fractions of their mental power). The main feature of these Minds—in comparison to extremely powerful artificial intelligences in other fiction—is that the Minds are (by design and by extension of their rational, but "humanistic" thought processes) generally a very benevolent presence, and show no wish to supplant or dominate their erstwhile creators. Though this is commonly viewed in a utopian light, a view where the human members of the Culture amount to little more than pets is not unsupportable.

MinD

The MinD protein is one of three proteins encoded by the minB operon and also a part of the ParA family of ATPases. It is required to generate pole to pole oscillations prior to bacterial cell division as a means of specifying the midzone of the cell. It is a peripheral membrane ATPase involved in plasmid partitioning.

History

When first discovered in E.coli, MinD was thought to associate with MinC and form a stable cap at each bacterial pole, thereby specifying the mid-zone of the cell by alleviating inhibitory pressures in that region. Through the use of live-cell imaging with GFP fusion proteins, Raskin and de Boer revealed a dynamic interaction of the Min proteins, demonstrating that MinC and MinD instead rapidly oscillate between the two poles in a non-static manner.

Function

The ATPase activity of MinD is activated by MinE while in the presence of phospholipids, suggesting that the binding to the membrane induces a conformational change allowing it to become susceptible to MinE activation. MinD activity is dependent on local MinD concentration, suggesting an oligomerization process and cooperativity.

Shake! (album)

Shake! is an album by the blues-rock group the Siegel–Schwall Band. Their third album, it was released in 1968 by Vanguard Records as a vinyl LP. It was later re-released as a CD, also on the Vanguard label.

Shake! was the group's last album to feature Jack Dawson on bass guitar and Russ Chadwick on drums.

Critical reception

On Allmusic, Cub Koda wrote, "Shake! was probably the group's second best album and certainly the one that came the closest to representing their live act.... Lots of fun and fireworks on this one, the sound of a band at the top of their game."

Track listing

Personnel

Shake (John Schlitt album)

Shake is the first solo album released by John Schlitt, lead singer of the Christian rock band Petra. It was released in the Spring of 1995.

Track listing

Personnel

Shake (unit)

A shake is an informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds, or 10⁻⁸seconds. It has applications in nuclear physics, helping to conveniently express the timing of various events in a nuclear explosion. The typical time required for one step in the chain reaction (i.e. the typical time for each neutron to cause a fission event which releases more neutrons) is of order 1 shake, and the chain reaction is typically complete by 50 to 100 shakes.

This is also applicable to circuits. Since signal progression in IC chips is very rapid, on the order of nanoseconds, a shake is good measure of how quickly a signal can progress through an IC.

Like many nuclear units, it is derived from Top Secret operations of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The word comes from the expression "two shakes of a lamb's tail," which indicates a very short time interval. For nuclear-bomb designers, 10 nanoseconds was a convenient specific interval to connect to this term.

It has been discussed at length that the oldest documented usage of the phrase "two shakes of a lamb's tail" can be found within the compiled works of Richard Harris Barham called The Ingoldsby Legends.