Bow tie

The bow tie /ˈboʊ/ is a type of necktie. It consists of a ribbon of fabric tied around the collar of a shirt in such a symmetrical manner that the two opposite ends form loops. Ready-tied bow ties are available, in which the distinctive bow is sewn and a band goes around the neck and clips to secure. Some "clip-ons" dispense with the band altogether, instead clipping to the collar. The traditional bow tie, consisting of a strip of cloth which the wearer has to tie by hand, may be known as a "self-tie," "tie-it-yourself," or "freestyle" bow tie to distinguish it from these.

Bow ties may be made of any fabric material, but most are made from silk, polyester, cotton, or a mixture of fabrics. Some fabrics (e.g., wool) are much less common for bow ties than for ordinary four-in-hand neckties.

A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also called the bow knot for that reason.

Origin and history

The bow tie originated among Croatian mercenaries during the Prussian wars of the 17th century: the Croat mercenaries used a scarf around the neck to hold together the opening of their shirts. This was soon adopted (under the name cravat, derived from the French for "Croat") by the upper classes in France, then a leader in fashion, and flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is uncertain whether the cravat then evolved into the bow tie and four-in-hand necktie, or whether the cravat gave rise to the bow tie, which in turn led to the four-in-hand necktie.

Bowtie (sequence analysis)

Bowtie is a software package commonly used for sequence alignment and sequence analysis in bioinformatics.

History

The Bowtie sequence aligner was originally developed by Ben Langmead et al. at the University of Maryland in 2009. The aligner is typically used with short reads and a large reference genome, or for whole genome analysis. Bowtie is promoted as "an ultrafast, memory-efficient short aligner for short DNA sequences." The speed increase of Bowtie is partly due to implementing the Burrows–Wheeler transform for aligning, which reduces the memory footprint (typically to around 2.2GB for the human genome); a similar method is used by the BWA and SOAP2 alignment methods. The latest version of Bowtie (1.1.2) was released on June 23, 2015. As of 2015, the Genome Biology paper describing the original Bowtie method has been cited more than 6,000 times. Bowtie is open-source software and is currently maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

Bowtie is used as a sequence aligner by a number of other related bioinformatics algorithms, including TopHat, Cufflinks and the CummeRbund Bioconductor package.

Bowtie (road)

The bowtie is an alternative to the Michigan left format that uses roundabouts on the cross street.

Design

Left turns are prohibited at the main intersection, which therefore requires only a two-phase signal. Vehicles yield upon entry to the roundabout. If the roundabout has only two entrances, the entry from the main intersection does not have to yield.

The roundabout diameter, including the center island and circulating roadway, varies from 90 feet to 300 feet depending on the speed of traffic on the approaches, the volume of traffic served, the number of approaches, and the design vehicle.

This configuration would reduce delay for the arterial street, increase capacity, and reduce the number of stops required. The primary problem with such a configuration is driver disregard for the left turn prohibition at the main intersection.

As yet no agency has designed a complete bowtie road junction.

See also

References