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Digesting Duck
The ''Canard Digérateur'', or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson and unveiled on 30 May 1739 in France. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces were "produced" from a second, so that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed. Voltaire wrote in 1741 that ('Without the voice of le Maure and Vaucanson's duck, you would have nothing to remind you of the glory of France.') The Duck is thought to have been destroyed in a fire at a museum in 1879. Operation The Duck was the size of a living duck, and was cased in gold-plated copper. As well as quacking and muddling water with its bill, it appeared capable of drinking water, and of taking food from its operator's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaucanson Automata
Jacques de Vaucanson (; February 24, 1709 – November 21, 1782) was a French inventor and artist who built the first all-metal lathe which was very important to the Industrial Revolution. The lathe is known as the mother of machine tools, as it was the first machine tool that led to the invention of other machine tools. He was responsible for the creation of impressive and innovative automata. He also was the first person to design an automatic loom. Early life De Vaucanson was born in Grenoble, France in 1709 as Jacques Vaucanson (the nobiliary particle "de" was later added to his name by the Académie des Sciences). The tenth child of a glove-maker, he grew up poor, and in his youth he reportedly aspired to become a clockmaker. He studied under the Jesuits and later joined the Order of the Minims in Lyon. It was his intention at the time to follow a course of religious studies, but he regained his interest in mechanical devices after meeting the surgeon Claude-Nicolas Le Cat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Norfolk
Lawrence Norfolk (born 1963) is a British novelist known for historical works with complex plots and intricate detail. Biography Though born in London, Norfolk lived in Iraq until 1967 and then in the West Country of England. He read English at King's College London and graduated in 1986. He worked briefly as a teacher and later as a freelance writer for reference-book publishers. In 1992 he won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, ''Lemprière's Dictionary'', about events surrounding the publication, in 1788, of John Lemprière's ''Bibliotheca Classica'' on classical mythology and history. The novel starts out as a detective story and mixes historical elements with steampunk-style fiction. Note David Horton's article on the German translation of Norfolk's ''Lempriere'': It imagines the writing of Lemprière's dictionary as tied to the founding of the British East India Company and the Siege of La Rochelle generations before; it also visits the Austro-Turkish Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robotic Animals
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc. Robotics develops machines that can substitute for humans and replicate human actions. Robots can be used in many situations for many purposes, but today many are used in dangerous environments (including inspection of radioactive materials, bomb detection and deactivation), manufacturing processes, or where humans cannot survive (e.g. in space, underwater, in high heat, and clean up and containment of hazardous materials and radiation). Robots can take any form, but some are made to resemble humans in appearance. This is claimed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automata (mechanical)
An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/automaton Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power. Since long ago, the term is commonly associated with automated puppets that resemble moving humans or animals, built to impress and/or to entertain people. Animatronics are a modern type of automata with electronics, often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. Etymology The word "automaton" is the latinization of the Ancient Greek , , (neuter) "acting of one's own will". This word was first used by Homer to describe an automatic door opening, or au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life. The gene is the unit of heredity, whereas the Cell (biology), cell is the structural and functional unit of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells and passes its genes onto a new generation, sometimes producing genetic variation. Organisms, or the individual entities of life, are generally thought t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Norfolk
Simon Norfolk (born 1963) is a Nigerian-born British architectural and landscape photographer. He has produced four photo book monographs of his work. His photographs are held in over a dozen public museum collections. Life and work Norfolk was born in Nigeria but was raised in England. Norfolk studied documentary photography at Newport College of Art. He lives and works in Brighton & Hove and Kabul. Norfolk has won the Prix Dialogue de l'Humanite award at Rencontres d'Arles, multiple World Press Photo and Sony World Photography Awards, the Foreign Press Club of America Award, European Publishers Award for PhotographyPrevious winners ", European Publishers Award for Photography. Accessed 8 May 2014. and an Infinity Prize from |
Reductionism
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts. Definitions ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three-part division: # Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts. # Methodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide an explanation in terms of ever-smaller entities. # Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb an older one, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three parts: translation, derivation, and explanation. Reductionism can be applied to any phenomenon, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gastrobot
Gastrobot, meaning literally 'stomach robot', was a term coined in 1998 by the University of South Florida Institute's director, Dr. Stuart Wilkinson. A gastrobot is "...an intelligent machine (robot) that derives all its energy requirements from the digestion of real food." The gastrobot's energy intake may come in the form of carbohydrates, lipids etc., or may be a simpler source, such as alcohol. The energy source commonly used for this robot is a mixture of carbohydrates and protein. The robot gets these molecules through a microbial fuel cell (MFC), which converts the food into gases and other potential energy. The gases and liquids help fuel things such as a hydrogen fuel cell, which helps create more energy—and other gases that help power the gastrobot's mechanics. These robots might be able to perform certain types of so-called 'start and forget' missions, such as to help maintain a particular ecological environment by removing invasive species. They might use optic senso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloaca
In animal anatomy, a cloaca ( ), plural cloacae ( or ), is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles and birds, and a few mammals ( monotremes, tenrecs, golden moles, and marsupial moles), have this orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces; this is in contrast to most placental mammals, which have two or three separate orifices for evacuation. Excretory openings with analogous purpose in some invertebrates are also sometimes referred to as cloacae. Mating through the cloaca is known as cloacal copulation, commonly referred to as cloacal kiss. The cloacal region is also often associated with a secretory organ, the cloacal gland, which has been implicated in the scent-marking behavior of some reptiles, marsupials, amphibians, and monotremes. Etymology The word is from the Latin verb ''cluo'', "(I) cleanse", thus the noun ''cloaca'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wim Delvoye
Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. As the critic Robert Enright wrote in the art magazine ''Border Crossings'', "Delvoye is involved in a way of making art that reorients our understanding of how beauty can be created". Wim Delvoye has an eclectic oeuvre, exposing his interest in a range of themes, from bodily function, and scatology to the function of art in the current market economy, and numerous subjects in between. He lives and works in Ghent (Belgium). Early life Delvoye was raised in Wervik, a small town in West Flanders, Belgium. He did not have a religious upbringing but has been influenced by the Roman Catholic architecture that surrounded him. In a conversation with Michaël Amy of the ''New York Times'', Delvoye stated, "I have vivid memories of crowds marching behind a single statue as well as of people kneeling in front o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player (german: Schachtürke, ; hu, A Török), was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.See Schaffer, Simon (1999), "Enlightened Automata", in Clark et al. (Eds), ''The Sciences in Enlightened Europe'', Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 126–165. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar ( he, לביא תדהר; born 16 November 1976) is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar lives in London. His novel '' Osama'' won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, beating Stephen King's '' 11/22/63'' and George R. R. Martin's ''A Dance with Dragons''. His novel '' A Man Lies Dreaming'' won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for ''Central Station''. As of October 2019 Tidhar is a columnist for ''The Washington Post''. Biography Tidhar was born and raised on Dalia, a prosperous kibbutz in Israel's rural north. He began to travel extensively from the age of 15 and incorporates his experiences as a traveller into several of his works. Awards and honours * 2022 Locus Award nominee, Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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