Mains (Scotland)

The word Mains (Scottish Gaelic: Mànas) in Scotland normally refers to the main buildings of a farm. This may include the farmhouse, farm buildings such as a byre,dairy, and workers' cottages. It is pseudo-plural, actually being a Lowland Scots corruption of the French demesne, and so is never used in the form "Main" (except occasionally in the tautological "Main farm", although this usage is not traditional).

The mains was usually the principal farm on an estate, or at least the one with the most fertile ground. The rough equivalent in England would be a 'home farm' (or perhaps 'manor farm', but not a 'manor' or 'manor house'). The Laird's house - if there was one - may have been nearby or some distance away, but is not usually considered part of the mains. Many mains remain as working farms, while others have been converted to residential accommodation. Sometimes the buildings and/or farm have disappeared altogether and only the name of the location survives.

The word Mains occurs frequently in Scottish placenames, most noticeably in the north east and east coast regions, extending down into Fife. The usual form is "Mains of X", without the definite article "the", for example, "Mains of Hallhead". However, the best known example of its use in a Scottish placename is Davidson's Mains, now a suburb of Edinburgh, which does not follow this form. Indeed, south of the M8, Mains almost invariably take the form "X Mains", as in "Mordington Mains". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary notes the same word/corruption/usage to have occurred in Northern England, and farm names of the form "X Mains" can also be found in northern Northumberland. In some cases, new owners have renamed various "mains" to "manor" in ignorance of the distinction in Scotland. The media occasionally uses the tautology, "Mains of X farm". Locally, it will be referred to as "the mains".

Mains electricity

Mains electricity is the general-purpose alternating-current (AC) electric power supply. In the US, mains electric power is referred to by several names including household power, household electricity, house current, powerline, domestic power, wall power, line power, AC power, city power, street power, and grid power.

The two principal properties of the electric power supply, voltage and frequency, differ between regions. A voltage of (nominally) 230 V and a frequency of 50 Hz is used in Europe, most of Africa, most of Asia, most of South America and Australia. In North America, the most common combination is 120 V and a frequency of 60 Hz. Other voltages exist, and some countries may have, for example, 230 V but 60 Hz. This is a concern to travelers, since portable appliances designed for one voltage and frequency combination may not operate or may be destroyed by another.

The use of different plugs and sockets in different regions provides some protection from accidental use of appliances with incompatible voltage and frequency requirements.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur–International that crashed on 17 July 2014 after being shot down, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board. The Boeing 777-200ER airliner lost contact about 50 km (31 mi) from the Ukraine–Russia border and crashed near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km (25 mi) from the border. The crash occurred during the Battle in Shakhtarsk Raion, part of the ongoing war in Donbass, in an area controlled by the Donbass People's Militia.

According to American and German intelligence sources, the plane was mistakenly shot down by pro-Russian insurgents using a Buk surface-to-air missile (SA-11) fired from the territory which they controlled. Their judgement was based on sensors that traced the path of the missile, analysis of fragment patterns in the wreckage, voice print analysis of conversations in which separatist militants claimed credit for the strike, as well as photos and other data from social media sites. On 13 October 2015, the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) released a final report on their investigation into the incident, concluding that the airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air 9M38-series missile with 9N314M warhead launched from Eastern Ukraine.

Tenerife airport disaster

The Tenerife airport disaster was a fatal runway collision between two Boeing 747s on Sunday, March 27, 1977, at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport) on the Spanish island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. The crash killed 583 people, making it the deadliest accident in aviation history. As a result of the complex interaction of organizational influences, environmental preconditions, and unsafe acts leading up to this aircraft mishap, the disaster at Tenerife has served as a textbook example for reviewing the processes and frameworks used in aviation mishap investigations and accident prevention.

A bomb explosion at Gran Canaria Airport, and the threat of a second bomb, caused many aircraft to be diverted to Los Rodeos Airport. Among them were KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736 – the two aircraft involved in the accident. At Los Rodeos Airport, air traffic controllers were forced to park many of the airplanes on the taxiway, thereby blocking it. Further complicating the situation, while authorities waited to reopen Gran Canaria, a dense fog developed at Tenerife, greatly reducing visibility.

Keystroke-level model

The Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) predicts how long it will take an expert user to accomplish a routine task without errors using an interactive computer system. It was proposed by Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell in 1980 in the Communications of the ACM and published in their book "The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction" in 1983, which is considered as a classic in the HCI field. The foundations were laid in 1974, when Card and Moran joined the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and created a group named Applied Information-Processing Psychology Project (AIP) with Newell as a consultant aiming to create an applied psychology of human-computer interaction. The KLM is still relevant today, which is shown by the recent research about mobile phones and touchscreens (see Adaptions).

Structure of the Keystroke-Level Model

The Keystroke-Level Model consists of six operators: the first four are physical motor operators followed by one mental operator and one system response operator:

TES

Tes or TES may refer to:

Places

In arts and entertainment

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In biology and chemistry

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In spaceflight

Tes (rapper)

Terrence Tessora, better known by his stage name Tes, is an American rapper from Brooklyn, New York.

In 2003, Tes released his debut album, X2. It was described by Exclaim! as "experimental New York hip-hop in the vein of Cannibal Ox, Aesop Rock and Company Flow."

Discography

References

External links