Dust storm

A dust storm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another.

Drylands around North Africa and the Arabian peninsula are the main terrestrial sources of airborne dust. Also with some contributions from Iran, Pakistan and India into the Arabian Sea, and China's significant storms deposit dust in the Pacific. It has been argued that recently, poor management of the Earth's drylands, such as neglecting the fallow system, are increasing dust storms size and frequency from desert margins and changing both the local and global climate, and also impacting local economies.

The term sandstorm is used most often in the context of desert sandstorms, especially in the Sahara Desert, or places where sand is a more prevalent soil type than dirt or rock, when, in addition to fine particles obscuring visibility, a considerable amount of larger sand particles are blown closer to the surface. The term dust storm is more likely to be used when finer particles are blown long distances, especially when the dust storm affects urban areas.

Sandstorm (vehicle)

Sandstorm is an autonomous vehicle created by Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team, for the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge competition. It is a heavily modified 1986 M998 HMMWV.

Sandstorm qualified in first position in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. It traveled the fastest and farthest (7.4 miles) during the race before high centering on an embankment.

The sensors used by Sandstorm in 2004 included three fixed LIDAR laser-ranging units, one steerable LIDAR (in the globe on top), a radar unit (developed in collaboration with the Duke University Robotics Team), and a pair of cameras for stereo vision. Sandstorm also had an Applanix POS/LV system, providing a GPS and inertial navigation system for determining geographical position.

Since the 2004 race Sandstorm has been continually tested and modified, logging hundreds of test miles. Testing includes an unprecedented continuous 200 mile test run at an average of 28 miles per hour.

The 2005 version of Sandstorm used six fixed LIDAR units, the steerable LIDAR, and short- and long-range radar.

Sand Storm (video game)

Sand Storm is a 1992 action game in which you are shooting an anti-air ballistic weapon. The premise of the game is similar to that of Sabotage. You must defend your home base from planes (which drop bombs), Patriot Missiles, and Scuds. If a missile or bomb touches the ground, some of the buildings in the base are damaged. Each building can be damaged three times. In other missions, you can direct a missile into designated enemy buildings.

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Plasma

Plasma or plasm may refer to:

Biology

Computing

Media and entertainment

KDE Plasma 4

KDE Plasma 4, subsequently renamed from KDE Plasma Workspaces, is the umbrella term for the fourth generation graphical environments provided by KDE. It comprehended of three workspaces, each targeting a certain platform: Plasma Desktop for traditional desktop PCs and notebooks, Plasma Netbook for netbooks, and Plasma Active for tablet PCs and similar devices.

KDE Plasma 4 was released as part of KDE Software Compilation 4 and replaced Kicker, KDesktop, and SuperKaramba, which formed the Desktop in earlier KDE releases. They are bundled as the default environment with a number of free software operating systems, such as Chakra,Kubuntu,Mageia (DVD version),openSUSE, or PC-BSD.

With the release of KDE SC 4.11 on 14 August 2013 KDE Plasma 4 was put into "feature freeze" and turned into an long-time stable package until August 2015. On 15 July 2014 KDE Plasma 4’s successor, KDE Plasma 5, was released.

Features

Plasma features containments, essentially an applet that contains other applets. Two examples of containments are the desktop background and the taskbar. A containment can be anything the developer wants: an image (either raster graphics or an SVG image), animation, or even OpenGL. Images are most commonly used, but with Plasma the user could set any applet as the desktop background without losing functionality of the applet. This also allows for applets to be dragged between the desktop and the taskbar (two separate containments), and have a separate visualization for the more confined taskbar.

Heliotrope (mineral)

The mineral aggregate heliotrope, also known as bloodstone, is a variety of jasper or chalcedony (which is a cryptocrystalline mixture of quartz). The "classic" bloodstone is green jasper (chalcedony) with red inclusions of hematite.

The red inclusions are supposed to resemble spots of blood; hence the name "bloodstone". The name "heliotrope" (from Greek ἥλιος helios, Sun, τρέπειν trepein, to turn) derives from various ancient notions about the manner in which the mineral reflects light. These are described, e.g., by Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. 37.165).

Heliotrope was called "stone of Babylon" by Albert the Great (1193–1280) and he referred to several magical properties, which were attributed to it from Late Antiquity. Pliny the Elder (1st century) mentioned first that the magicians used it as a stone of invisibility. Damigeron (4th century) wrote about its property to make rain, solar eclipse and its special virtue in divination and preserving health and youth.

Heliotrope features in one of Boccaccio's stories in the Decameron.