Impact

Impact may refer to:

In science:

In development:

In computing:

In film, television and radio:

In literature:

Impact (novel)

Impact is a science fiction thriller novel by American writer Douglas Preston, published on January 5, 2010 by Forge Books. The novel is the third book in the Wyman Ford series. The book was reviewed on All Things Considered in February 2010.

Plot summary

Ex-CIA agent Wyman Ford returns to Cambodia to investigate the source of radioactive gemstones and uncovers an unusual impact crater. A young woman on the other side of the world photographs a meteoroid's passage in the atmosphere with her telescope and deduces that it must have struck on one of the islands just offshore from Round Pond, Maine. A NASA scientist analyzing data from the Mars Mapping Orbiter (MMO) spots unusual spikes in gamma ray activity. These threads intersect with discovery of an alien device that has apparently been on Deimos, one of the two moons of Mars, for at least 100 million years. Something has caused it to activate and fire a strangelet at Earth, setting off the events in the novel.

Timeline

The events in this novel follow those of The Codex, Tyrannosaur Canyon, and Blasphemy. As such, Wyman Ford is the protagonist once again (having appeared in Tyrannosaur Canyon and Blasphemy), and the character of Stanton Lockwood III (who debuted in Blasphemy) also returns.

Damon Harris

Damon Harris (born Otis Robert Harris, Jr., July 17, 1950 – February 18, 2013) was an African-American soul and R&B singer, most notable as a member of The Temptations from 1971 to 1975. Twenty years old when he joined the group, Harris was the youngest member of The Temptations during his tenure in the group. As a teenager Harris had formed a Temptations tribute band named The Young Tempts (aka The Young Vandals). The group had charted singles released on T-Neck Records, and later had a few minor hits under the name Impact. He also was instrumental in his former singing group partner, Billy Griffin, getting the opportunity to replace Smokey Robinson in The Miracles. Harris later founded, and became the CEO of, The Damon Harris Cancer Foundation dedicated to promoting the awareness, diagnosis, and treatment of prostate cancer.

Biography

The Young Tempts/The Young Vandals

As a teenager growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, Otis Harris, Jr. was a major Temptations fan, and idolized in particular the group's falsetto, Eddie Kendricks. Patterning himself after Kendricks, Harris and his friends John Quinton Simms, Charles Timmons (also known as Kareem Ali, who went on to perform with Glenn Leonard's Temptations Revue), and Donald Knute Tighman, formed a Temptations-inspired vocal group during his high school years called The Young Tempts ("Tempts" being a nickname for the Temptations). The Young Tempts recorded covers of two 1966 Temptations' songs, "I've Been Good to You" (a song originally recorded by The Miracles), and "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby," for The Isley Brothers' T-Neck Records in 1970. Motown Records filed an injunction against T-Neck because of the group's name; the 45 was withdrawn and re-issued with the group credited as The Young Vandals, and reached #46 on the R&B charts.

Velocity (software development)

Velocity is a capacity planning tool sometimes used in Agile software development. Velocity tracking is the act of measuring said velocity. The velocity is calculated by counting the number of units of work completed in a certain interval, the length of which is determined at the start of the project.

Principle

The main idea behind velocity is to help teams estimate how much work they can complete in a given time period based on how quickly similar work was previously completed.

Terminology

The following terminology is used in velocity tracking.

Usage

To calculate velocity, a team first has to determine how many units of work each task is worth and the length of each interval. During development, the team has to keep track of completed tasks and, at the end of the interval, count the number of units of work completed during the interval. The team then writes down the calculated velocity in a chart or on a graph.

The first week provides little value, but is essential to provide a basis for comparison. Each week after that, the velocity tracking will provide better information as the team provides better estimates and becomes more used to the methodology.

Velocity (TV channel)

Velocity (formerly HD Theater and originally Discovery HD Theater) is an American high-definition, commercial-based, cable and satellite television channel owned by Discovery Communications. The channel specializes in nonfictional programming, focusing on cars, sports related shows, and other programming targeted at men ages 18–54.

As of February 2015, approximately 62.3 million American households (53.5% of households with television) receive Velocity.

History

The channel launched nationwide in the United States on June 17, 2002, as Discovery HD Theater. The channel was rebranded to HD Theater on September 22, 2007, because Discovery Communications launched HD simulcasts of some of its other channels including Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Science and TLC.

On April 14, 2011, Discovery Communications announced that HD Theater would be re-launched as Velocity later in the year: aimed primarily at an "upscale male" audience, the network focuses primarily on automotive-oriented programming and other shows of interest to a male audience. The re-launch took place on October 4, 2011.

Velocity (memory cache)

Velocity was the code name for a distributed key-value cache platform for in-memory caches spread across multiple systems, developed by Microsoft. It is now incorporated as the caching element of Microsoft's AppFabric.

Design

Any number of systems can be a part of the cache; the velocity runtime pools together the individual caches on each machine to present a unified view to the applications. Applications need not know on which machine the cache is stored; rather the applications query the Velocity runtime which in turn, forwards the request to the system that houses the cache item. The Velocity API is surfaced in managed code; so any CLI-compliant language can be used to access the Velocity cache. Any serialized managed object can be added to the cache.

References

External links