This Week I Learned - Week #26 2022

This Week I Learned - 

* Azure Functions is "married" to Azure Static Web Apps (SWA) and provides the "A" (=API) for running JAMstack apps on Azure. JAMstack is a method for building fast, lightweight web applications using mostly JavaScript, APIs, and markup (HTML/CSS). In a JAMstack web application, as much HTML as possible is pre-built and stored in a content delivery network (CDN). Instead of running a monolithic backend application on the server side to generate dynamic content, dynamic components of the application are based on APIs. 

* Stackdriver is now Google Cloud's Operations suite. Google Stackdriver Monitoring is Google Cloud Monitoring and Google Stackdriver Logs is Google Cloud Logging.

* Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring.

* Power BI has a very powerful import and data cleanup engine which is called Power Query. In Excel, go to the Data tab > Get & Transform Data to view data sources and use the cleanup capability of Power Query

* Holding the shift key while hovering over a request on Chrome DevTools will highlight the initiator in green and dependencies in red.

* Nintendo started out as a playing cards manufacturer. Once that was outlawed, they made traditional Hanafuda cards. These cards had no numbers and the government felt it wouldn't be used for gambling. But the Japanese mafia - the Yakuza figured out a new form of gambling using the traditional cards. Nintendo became Japan’s largest manufacturer of Hanafuda cards and Yakuza, its largest customer. Nintendo used the cash to dabble in other industries, before venturing into the toys and video game markets, thereby ending its association with the Japanese mafia. - IWTK

* Sign language doesn’t only use signs to communicate. It uses facial expression, hand movement and position, gestures and body language to communicate. Sign language doesn’t mirror spoken language. Sign languages’ grammar differs from spoken languages.

* Penguins do not have teeth. They have rearward-pointing, spikes on their tongues and the rooves of their mouths, that look like stalagmites and stalactites in a cave. Those teeth-looking structures on the tongue and palate are comprised of soft keratin spikes called papillae. These are not used for chewing, but instead assist in the swallowing of their slippery prey.

* Our eye works from 7000 angstroms to 4000 angstroms, from red to violet, but the bee’s can see down to 3000 angstroms into the ultraviolet! This makes for a number of different interesting effects. In the first place, bees can distinguish between many flowers which to us look alike. Of course, we must realize that the colors of flowers are not designed for our eyes, but for the bee; they are signals to attract the bees to a specific flower. - The Feynman Lectures on Physics

* Polonium which was discovered by Marie Curie & and her husband, Pierre Curie, is 400 times more radioactive than uranium. Curie became, in 1903, the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. In 1911, for the isolation of radium, she was awarded another Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was and still is the only person to be awarded Nobel Prizes in two scientific categories. 

* In 2021, the World Health Organization added insulin to its model list of essential medicines. 3 separate Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work on insulin & several Nobel Prizes that have been awarded also have an indirect connection with insulin. 

* Michael Faraday was a British scientist born in 1791. Although not formally educated, he had a strong interest in electromagnetism. He also credited with discovering Benzene and popularizing terms such as anode, cathode and electrode. As an apprentice for a bookbinder, he read many books which encouraged his interest in science. He soon became a well known experimental scientist leading to his name becoming a unit of electrical charge. He is also known for inventing the Faraday rotator and Faraday cage.

* A Faraday cage is a conductive metal container that blocks electric fields. When electricity is applied to the cage, it distributes the charge and therefore protects anything inside. There are many applications that have benefited from this observation. For instance, a microwave is a type of Faraday cage. If you have ever had an MRI done, then you have been inside a Faraday cage, also known as an RF Shield. Another type of a Faraday cage is an airplane. When they are hit by lightning, it spreads over the aluminum hull and protects the passengers inside. Your car also essentially becomes a Faraday cage. Just make sure you have the windows closed or you will leave an opening for that charge to enter! The rubber tires on your car do not protect you from lightning, they simply ground your vehicle so that the electricity has a place to exit.

* 85% of the world’s plants depend on pollination. 

* One epidemiological study from Taiwan indicated that the average age of hip fracture was 76.7 ± 9.0 years for women and 74.1 ± 9.6 years for men. The average age at hip fracture is 83 for women and 84 for men, with about 80% of cases in women. National Library of Medicine

* A top Premier League match, where a stadium can pack 40,000 to 60,000 football fans, easily runs £100 ($121) for club members, with prices far higher on the secondary market. 

* On July 15, 2009, Mumbai had received 274.1 mm rainfall, while on July 2, 2019, it had recorded 376.2 mm rainfall. At 324 mm, Ghatkesvar in Hyderabad [PDF; Jan 2021] received the highest one-day maximum on October 13, 2020. The world's highest ever rainfall in one day was 1825 mm, as recorded on January 6, 1966 in Fac Fac, on La Reunion island in the Indian ocean.

* Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha (सर्वदर्शनसंग्रह) ('A Compendium of all the Philosophical Systems') is a philosophical text by the 14th-century Indian scholar Mādhavāchārya. In the book, Mādhavāchārya reviews the sixteen philosophical systems current in India at the time, and gives what appeared to him to be their most important tenets, and the principal arguments by which their followers endeavoured to maintain them.

* Amartya Sen is an atheist. In an interview, he noted:

In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented. That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India, despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than exists in any other classical language. Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher, wrote this rather great book called Sarvadarshansamgraha, which discussed all the religious schools of thought within the Hindu structure. The first chapter is "Atheism"—a very strong presentation of the argument in favor of atheism and materialism.

* "Every cloud has a silver lining, and some also have high concentrations of organic aerosols." - Aphorisms for the Anthropocene, The New Yorker

* "The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate.​" - Shane Parrish