This Week I Learned - Week #37 2022

This Week I Learned - 

* Articles on docs.microsoft.com now redirect to learn.microsoft.com 

JSON Crack generates graph diagrams from JSON files and makes them easy to read.

* Ujaval Gandhi has shared the full course material for "Mapping and Data Visualization with Python", a comprehensive guide for creating static and dynamic visualizations with spatial data.

AI4Bharat was set up as an initiative of IIT Madras to build open-source language AI for Indian languages.

* There is a tradition in China of zhuansong, or re-gifting. It may be regarded as vulgar in other cultures, but in China re-gifting is widely seen as a compliment, enhancing the status of both the giver and the recipient. 

* Mango is the national fruit of the Philippines.

* Nightingale is Iran's national bird

* Barley's glycemic index score of 28 is the lowest of all grains. Millets have a low glycemic index, ranging from 54 to 68 in Foxtail Millet (Italian Millet, Kangni / Kakum in Hindi), Pearl Millet (Bajra in Hindi), and Finger Millet (Ragi or Nachni in Hindi). With a glycemic index between 50 and 58, basmati rice is a low to medium glycemic index food. GI score of Brown  rice is 66 and White rice is 72.

* Starlings are a nuisance and they are one of the few species in the US not protected by law. These birds of feathers flock together to form dense clusters and have caused aircraft crashes. - IWTK

* In The Monk In The Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics, Robin Marantz Henig writes "By the time Mendel was done with this succession of crosses, recrosses, and backcrosses, he must have counted a total of more than 10,000 plants, 40,000 blossoms, and a staggering 300,000 peas." St. Augustine stated that you talk to God when you pray, but God talks to you when you read. And Mendel's monastery followed Augustinian doctrine.
That quiet isolation and contemplation may also have been essential to conducting the work. Growing and recording peas does not seem stimulating. 

* William Shockley (1910 – 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". Partly as a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's Silicon Valley became a hotbed of electronics innovation. He has been called "the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley". In 1956, Shockley started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California. Shockley was autocratic, domineering, erratic, hard-to-please, and increasingly paranoid. In late 1957, eight of Shockley's best researchers, who would come to be known as the "traitorous eight", resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors.They went on to form Fairchild Semiconductor , a loss from which Shockley Semiconductor never recovered. In the last two decades of his life, Shockley, who had no degree in genetics, became widely known for his extreme views on race and human intelligence, and his advocacy of eugenics. As described by his Los Angeles Times obituary, "He went from being a physicist with impeccable academic credentials to amateur geneticist, becoming a lightning rod whose views sparked campus demonstrations and a cascade of calumny. 

* All excavators and bulldozers are popularly referred as JCBs. Be it Escorts, Tata, Mahindra or Caterpillar, if the excavators run on four tyres, they are called JCB. JCB is actually a brand name. Joseph Cyril Bamford began the business that bears his initials using surplus World War II parts and scrap metals. The construction and excavation equipment company founded in 1945, started in India as a joint venture in 1979 and is now a fully owned subsidiary of J.C Bamford Excavators, United Kingdom. India is now JCB's biggest market behind the UK.

* A Sovereign Gold Bond investor saves on the 3% GST on the purchase of gold, the 1% TDS which is charged if the physical gold of more than two lakhs, GST on the making charges and LTCG if held till maturity or via HUFs and Trusts. - Mint

* A subscriber, who has been in NPS for at least 3 years, can withdraw a maximum of 25% of the contributions made by the Subscriber (excluding returns thereof and employer contribution, if any).

* The term 'Urban Naxal' is often used by some segments of the political spectrum to describe sympathisers of the Naxalism cause as well as certain social activists.

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