["[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-01 00:00]\n<User>The following are some new knowledge:\nFrom the 1950s on, many areas of the Great Plains have become productive crop-growing areas because of extensive irrigation on large landholdings. The United States is a major exporter of agricultural products. The southern portion of the Great Plains lies over the Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground layer of water-bearing strata dating from the last ice age. Center pivot irrigation is used extensively in drier sections of the Great Plains, resulting in aquifer depletion at a rate that is greater than the ground's ability to recharge.\n\nThe Great Plains is the broad expanse of flat land (a plain), much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, that lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie states and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts, but not all, of the states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The region is known for supporting extensive cattle ranching and dry farming.\n\nThe North American Environmental Atlas, produced by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a NAFTA agency composed of the geographical agencies of the Mexican, American, and Canadian governments uses the \"Great Plains\" as an ecoregion synonymous with predominant prairies and grasslands rather than as physiographic region defined by topography. The Great Plains ecoregion includes five sub-regions: Temperate Prairies, West-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, South-Central Semi-Arid Prairies, Texas Louisiana Coastal Plains, and Tamaulipus-Texas Semi-Arid Plain, which overlap or expand upon other Great Plains designations.\n\nThe railroads opened up the Great Plains for settlement, for now it was possible to ship wheat and other crops at low cost to the urban markets in the East, and Europe. Homestead land was free for American settlers. Railroads sold their land at cheap rates to immigrants in expectation they would generate traffic as soon as farms were established. Immigrants poured in, especially from Germany and Scandinavia. On the plains, very few single men attempted to operate a farm or ranch by themselves; they clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, feeding the hired hands, and, especially after the 1930s, handling paperwork and financial details. During the early years of settlement, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After approximately one generation, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New technology including sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. The scientific housekeeping movement, promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women regarding farm bookkeeping, and home economics courses in the schools.\n\nDuring the Cenozoic era, specifically about 25 million years ago during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, the continental climate became favorable to the evolution of grasslands. Existing forest biomes declined and grasslands became much more widespread. The grasslands provided a new niche for mammals, including many ungulates and glires, that switched from browsing diets to grazing diets. Traditionally, the spread of grasslands and the development of grazers have been strongly linked. However, an examination of mammalian teeth suggests that it is the open, gritty habitat and not the grass itself which is linked to diet changes in mammals, giving rise to the \"grit, not grass\" hypothesis.\n\nTo allow for agricultural development of the Great Plains and house a growing population, the US passed the Homestead Acts of 1862: it allowed a settler to claim up to 160 acres (65 ha) of land, provided that he lived on it for a period of five years and cultivated it. The provisions were expanded under the Kinkaid Act of 1904 to include a homestead of an entire section. Hundreds of thousands of people claimed such homesteads, sometimes building sod houses out of the very turf of their land. Many of them were not skilled dryland farmers and failures were frequent. Much of the Plains were settled during relatively wet years. Government experts did not understand how farmers should cultivate the prairies and gave advice counter to what would have worked[citation needed]. Germans from Russia who had previously farmed, under similar circumstances, in what is now Ukraine were marginally more successful than other homesteaders. The Dominion Lands Act of 1871 served a similar function for establishing homesteads on the prairies in Canada.\n\nInfrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected. Infrared astronomy uses sensor-equipped telescopes to penetrate dusty regions of space, such as molecular clouds; detect objects such as planets, and to view highly red-shifted objects from the early days of the universe. Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatus.\n\nThe onset of infrared is defined (according to different standards) at various values typically between 700 nm and 800 nm, but the boundary between visible and infrared light is not precisely defined. The human eye is markedly less sensitive to light above 700 nm wavelength, so longer wavelengths make insignificant contributions to scenes illuminated by common light sources. However, particularly intense near-IR light (e.g., from IR lasers, IR LED sources, or from bright daylight with the visible light removed by colored gels) can be detected up to approximately 780 nm, and will be perceived as red light. Sources providing wavelengths as long as 1050 nm can be seen as a dull red glow in intense sources, causing some difficulty in near-IR illumination of scenes in the dark (usually this practical problem is solved by indirect illumination). Leaves are particularly bright in the near IR, and if all visible light leaks from around an IR-filter are blocked, and the eye is given a moment to adjust to the extremely dim image coming through a visually opaque IR-passing photographic filter, it is possible to see the Wood effect that consists of IR-glowing foliage.\n\nThe concept of emissivity is important in understanding the infrared emissions of objects. This is a property of a surface that describes how its thermal emissions deviate from the ideal of a black body. To further explain, two objects at the same physical temperature will not show the same infrared image if they have differing emissivity. For example, for any pre-set emissivity value, objects with higher emissivity will appear hotter, and those with a lower emissivity will appear cooler. For that reason, incorrect selection of emissivity will give inaccurate results when using infrared cameras and pyrometers.\n\nInfrared vibrational spectroscopy (see also near-infrared spectroscopy) is a technique that can be used to identify molecules by analysis of their constituent bonds. Each chemical bond in a molecule vibrates at a frequency characteristic of that bond. A group of atoms in a molecule (e.g., CH2) may have multiple modes of oscillation caused by the stretching and bending motions of the group as a whole. If an oscillation leads to a change in dipole in the molecule then it will absorb a photon that has the same frequency. The vibrational frequencies of most molecules correspond to the frequencies of infrared light. Typically, the technique is used to study organic compounds using light radiation from 4000\u2013400 cm\u22121, the mid-infrared. A spectrum of all the frequencies of absorption in a sample is recorded. This can be used to gain information about the sample composition in terms of chemical groups present and also its purity (for example, a wet sample will show a broad O-H absorption around 3200 cm\u22121).\n\nIn infrared photography, infrared filters are used to capture the near-infrared spectrum. Digital cameras often use infrared blockers. Cheaper digital cameras and camera phones have less effective filters and can \"see\" intense near-infrared, appearing as a bright purple-white color. This is especially pronounced when taking pictures of subjects near IR-bright areas (such as near a lamp), where the resulting infrared interference can wash out the image. There is also a technique called 'T-ray' imaging, which is imaging using far-infrared or terahertz radiation. Lack of bright sources can make terahertz photography more challenging than most other infrared imaging techniques. Recently T-ray imaging has been of considerable interest due to a number of new developments such as terahertz time-domain spectroscopy.\n<Assistant>Appreciated. I'll retain these important details.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-02 00:00]\n<User>Let me provide you with some new details:\nInfrared reflectography (fr; it; es), as called by art conservators, can be applied to paintings to reveal underlying layers in a completely non-destructive manner, in particular the underdrawing or outline drawn by the artist as a guide. This often reveals the artist's use of carbon black, which shows up well in reflectograms, as long as it has not also been used in the ground underlying the whole painting. Art conservators are looking to see whether the visible layers of paint differ from the underdrawing or layers in between \u2013 such alterations are called pentimenti when made by the original artist. This is very useful information in deciding whether a painting is the prime version by the original artist or a copy, and whether it has been altered by over-enthusiastic restoration work. In general, the more pentimenti the more likely a painting is to be the prime version. It also gives useful insights into working practices.\n\nThe discovery of infrared radiation is ascribed to William Herschel, the astronomer, in the early 19th century. Herschel published his results in 1800 before the Royal Society of London. Herschel used a prism to refract light from the sun and detected the infrared, beyond the red part of the spectrum, through an increase in the temperature recorded on a thermometer. He was surprised at the result and called them \"Calorific Rays\". The term 'Infrared' did not appear until late in the 19th century.\n<Assistant>Thanks for sharing. I've committed this to memory.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-03 00:00]\n<User>I have some fresh insights to share:\nInfrared radiation is popularly known as \"heat radiation\"[citation needed], but light and electromagnetic waves of any frequency will heat surfaces that absorb them. Infrared light from the Sun accounts for 49% of the heating of Earth, with the rest being caused by visible light that is absorbed then re-radiated at longer wavelengths. Visible light or ultraviolet-emitting lasers can char paper and incandescently hot objects emit visible radiation. Objects at room temperature will emit radiation concentrated mostly in the 8 to 25 \u00b5m band, but this is not distinct from the emission of visible light by incandescent objects and ultraviolet by even hotter objects (see black body and Wien's displacement law).\n\nInfrared tracking, also known as infrared homing, refers to a passive missile guidance system, which uses the emission from a target of electromagnetic radiation in the infrared part of the spectrum to track it. Missiles that use infrared seeking are often referred to as \"heat-seekers\", since infrared (IR) is just below the visible spectrum of light in frequency and is radiated strongly by hot bodies. Many objects such as people, vehicle engines, and aircraft generate and retain heat, and as such, are especially visible in the infrared wavelengths of light compared to objects in the background.\n\nHigh, cold ice clouds such as Cirrus or Cumulonimbus show up bright white, lower warmer clouds such as Stratus or Stratocumulus show up as grey with intermediate clouds shaded accordingly. Hot land surfaces will show up as dark-grey or black. One disadvantage of infrared imagery is that low cloud such as stratus or fog can be a similar temperature to the surrounding land or sea surface and does not show up. However, using the difference in brightness of the IR4 channel (10.3\u201311.5 \u00b5m) and the near-infrared channel (1.58\u20131.64 \u00b5m), low cloud can be distinguished, producing a fog satellite picture. The main advantage of infrared is that images can be produced at night, allowing a continuous sequence of weather to be studied.\n\nThe sensitivity of Earth-based infrared telescopes is significantly limited by water vapor in the atmosphere, which absorbs a portion of the infrared radiation arriving from space outside of selected atmospheric windows. This limitation can be partially alleviated by placing the telescope observatory at a high altitude, or by carrying the telescope aloft with a balloon or an aircraft. Space telescopes do not suffer from this handicap, and so outer space is considered the ideal location for infrared astronomy.\n<Assistant>I understand. I'll keep this in mind.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-04 00:00]\n<User>I'd like to share some important information:\nNear-infrared is the region closest in wavelength to the radiation detectable by the human eye, mid- and far-infrared are progressively further from the visible spectrum. Other definitions follow different physical mechanisms (emission peaks, vs. bands, water absorption) and the newest follow technical reasons (the common silicon detectors are sensitive to about 1,050 nm, while InGaAs's sensitivity starts around 950 nm and ends between 1,700 and 2,600 nm, depending on the specific configuration). Unfortunately, international standards for these specifications are not currently available.\n\nHeat is energy in transit that flows due to temperature difference. Unlike heat transmitted by thermal conduction or thermal convection, thermal radiation can propagate through a vacuum. Thermal radiation is characterized by a particular spectrum of many wavelengths that is associated with emission from an object, due to the vibration of its molecules at a given temperature. Thermal radiation can be emitted from objects at any wavelength, and at very high temperatures such radiations are associated with spectra far above the infrared, extending into visible, ultraviolet, and even X-ray regions (i.e., the solar corona). Thus, the popular association of infrared radiation with thermal radiation is only a coincidence based on typical (comparatively low) temperatures often found near the surface of planet Earth.\n\nThermographic cameras detect radiation in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum (roughly 900\u201314,000 nanometers or 0.9\u201314 \u03bcm) and produce images of that radiation. Since infrared radiation is emitted by all objects based on their temperatures, according to the black body radiation law, thermography makes it possible to \"see\" one's environment with or without visible illumination. The amount of radiation emitted by an object increases with temperature, therefore thermography allows one to see variations in temperature (hence the name).\n\nThe infrared portion of the spectrum has several useful benefits for astronomers. Cold, dark molecular clouds of gas and dust in our galaxy will glow with radiated heat as they are irradiated by imbedded stars. Infrared can also be used to detect protostars before they begin to emit visible light. Stars emit a smaller portion of their energy in the infrared spectrum, so nearby cool objects such as planets can be more readily detected. (In the visible light spectrum, the glare from the star will drown out the reflected light from a planet.)\n\nInfrared is used in night vision equipment when there is insufficient visible light to see. Night vision devices operate through a process involving the conversion of ambient light photons into electrons that are then amplified by a chemical and electrical process and then converted back into visible light. Infrared light sources can be used to augment the available ambient light for conversion by night vision devices, increasing in-the-dark visibility without actually using a visible light source.\n\nIR data transmission is also employed in short-range communication among computer peripherals and personal digital assistants. These devices usually conform to standards published by IrDA, the Infrared Data Association. Remote controls and IrDA devices use infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to emit infrared radiation that is focused by a plastic lens into a narrow beam. The beam is modulated, i.e. switched on and off, to encode the data. The receiver uses a silicon photodiode to convert the infrared radiation to an electric current. It responds only to the rapidly pulsing signal created by the transmitter, and filters out slowly changing infrared radiation from ambient light. Infrared communications are useful for indoor use in areas of high population density. IR does not penetrate walls and so does not interfere with other devices in adjoining rooms. Infrared is the most common way for remote controls to command appliances. Infrared remote control protocols like RC-5, SIRC, are used to communicate with infrared.\n\nIn the semiconductor industry, infrared light can be used to characterize materials such as thin films and periodic trench structures. By measuring the reflectance of light from the surface of a semiconductor wafer, the index of refraction (n) and the extinction Coefficient (k) can be determined via the Forouhi-Bloomer dispersion equations. The reflectance from the infrared light can also be used to determine the critical dimension, depth, and sidewall angle of high aspect ratio trench structures.\n\nInfrared cleaning is a technique used by some Motion picture film scanner, film scanners and flatbed scanners to reduce or remove the effect of dust and scratches upon the finished scan. It works by collecting an additional infrared channel from the scan at the same position and resolution as the three visible color channels (red, green, and blue). The infrared channel, in combination with the other channels, is used to detect the location of scratches and dust. Once located, those defects can be corrected by scaling or replaced by inpainting.\n<Assistant>Thanks for sharing. I've committed this to memory.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-05 00:00]\n<User>I've gathered some additional data to share:\nEarth's surface and the clouds absorb visible and invisible radiation from the sun and re-emit much of the energy as infrared back to atmosphere. Certain substances in the atmosphere, chiefly cloud droplets and water vapor, but also carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, and chlorofluorocarbons, absorb this infrared, and re-radiate it in all directions including back to Earth. Thus, the greenhouse effect keeps the atmosphere and surface much warmer than if the infrared absorbers were absent from the atmosphere.\n\nBiodiversity, a contraction of \"biological diversity,\" generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species, between species, and between ecosystems. It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation (number of species) within an area, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is richest in the tropics. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future.\n\nThis multilevel construct is consistent with Dasmann and Lovejoy. An explicit definition consistent with this interpretation was first given in a paper by Bruce A. Wilcox commissioned by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) for the 1982 World National Parks Conference. Wilcox's definition was \"Biological diversity is the variety of life forms...at all levels of biological systems (i.e., molecular, organismic, population, species and ecosystem)...\". The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit defined \"biological diversity\" as \"the variability among living organisms from all sources, including, 'inter alia', terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems\". This definition is used in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.\n\nOn the other hand, changes through the Phanerozoic correlate much better with the hyperbolic model (widely used in population biology, demography and macrosociology, as well as fossil biodiversity) than with exponential and logistic models. The latter models imply that changes in diversity are guided by a first-order positive feedback (more ancestors, more descendants) and/or a negative feedback arising from resource limitation. Hyperbolic model implies a second-order positive feedback. The hyperbolic pattern of the world population growth arises from a second-order positive feedback between the population size and the rate of technological growth. The hyperbolic character of biodiversity growth can be similarly accounted for by a feedback between diversity and community structure complexity. The similarity between the curves of biodiversity and human population probably comes from the fact that both are derived from the interference of the hyperbolic trend with cyclical and stochastic dynamics.\n\nInterspecific crop diversity is, in part, responsible for offering variety in what we eat. Intraspecific diversity, the variety of alleles within a single species, also offers us choice in our diets. If a crop fails in a monoculture, we rely on agricultural diversity to replant the land with something new. If a wheat crop is destroyed by a pest we may plant a hardier variety of wheat the next year, relying on intraspecific diversity. We may forgo wheat production in that area and plant a different species altogether, relying on interspecific diversity. Even an agricultural society which primarily grows monocultures, relies on biodiversity at some point.\n\nIn absolute terms, the planet has lost 52% of its biodiversity since 1970 according to a 2014 study by the World Wildlife Fund. The Living Planet Report 2014 claims that \"the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago\". Of that number, 39% accounts for the terrestrial wildlife gone, 39% for the marine wildlife gone, and 76% for the freshwater wildlife gone. Biodiversity took the biggest hit in Latin America, plummeting 83 percent. High-income countries showed a 10% increase in biodiversity, which was canceled out by a loss in low-income countries. This is despite the fact that high-income countries use five times the ecological resources of low-income countries, which was explained as a result of process whereby wealthy nations are outsourcing resource depletion to poorer nations, which are suffering the greatest ecosystem losses.\n\nA 2007 study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that biodiversity and genetic diversity are codependent\u2014that diversity among species requires diversity within a species, and vice versa. \"If any one type is removed from the system, the cycle can break down, and the community becomes dominated by a single species.\" At present, the most threatened ecosystems are found in fresh water, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, which was confirmed by the \"Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment\", organised by the biodiversity platform, and the French Institut de recherche pour le d\u00e9veloppement (MNHNP).\n\nFinally, an introduced species may unintentionally injure a species that depends on the species it replaces. In Belgium, Prunus spinosa from Eastern Europe leafs much sooner than its West European counterparts, disrupting the feeding habits of the Thecla betulae butterfly (which feeds on the leaves). Introducing new species often leaves endemic and other local species unable to compete with the exotic species and unable to survive. The exotic organisms may be predators, parasites, or may simply outcompete indigenous species for nutrients, water and light.\n\nThe forests play a vital role in harbouring more than 45,000 floral and 81,000 faunal species of which 5150 floral and 1837 faunal species are endemic. Plant and animal species confined to a specific geographical area are called endemic species. In reserved forests, rights to activities like hunting and grazing are sometimes given to communities living on the fringes of the forest, who sustain their livelihood partially or wholly from forest resources or products. The unclassed forests covers 6.4 percent of the total forest area and they are marked by the following characteristics:\n\nGlobal agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, give \"sovereign national rights over biological resources\" (not property). The agreements commit countries to \"conserve biodiversity\", \"develop resources for sustainability\" and \"share the benefits\" resulting from their use. Biodiverse countries that allow bioprospecting or collection of natural products, expect a share of the benefits rather than allowing the individual or institution that discovers/exploits the resource to capture them privately. Bioprospecting can become a type of biopiracy when such principles are not respected.[citation needed]\n<Assistant>Thanks for the update. I've recorded these facts.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-06 00:00]\n<User>Let me provide you with some new details:\nRapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. The total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037, and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon).\n\nThe history of biodiversity during the Phanerozoic (the last 540 million years), starts with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion\u2014a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. Over the next 400 million years or so, invertebrate diversity showed little overall trend, and vertebrate diversity shows an overall exponential trend. This dramatic rise in diversity was marked by periodic, massive losses of diversity classified as mass extinction events. A significant loss occurred when rainforests collapsed in the carboniferous. The worst was the Permian-Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover from this event.\n\nJared Diamond describes an \"Evil Quartet\" of habitat destruction, overkill, introduced species, and secondary extinctions. Edward O. Wilson prefers the acronym HIPPO, standing for Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, human over-Population, and Over-harvesting. The most authoritative classification in use today is IUCN's Classification of Direct Threats which has been adopted by major international conservation organizations such as the US Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, and BirdLife International.\n\nEndemic species can be threatened with extinction through the process of genetic pollution, i.e. uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and genetic swamping. Genetic pollution leads to homogenization or replacement of local genomes as a result of either a numerical and/or fitness advantage of an introduced species. Hybridization and introgression are side-effects of introduction and invasion. These phenomena can be especially detrimental to rare species that come into contact with more abundant ones. The abundant species can interbreed with the rare species, swamping its gene pool. This problem is not always apparent from morphological (outward appearance) observations alone. Some degree of gene flow is normal adaptation, and not all gene and genotype constellations can be preserved. However, hybridization with or without introgression may, nevertheless, threaten a rare species' existence.\n\nThe age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, \"remains of biotic life\" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, \"If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe.\"\n\nThe fossil record suggests that the last few million years featured the greatest biodiversity in history. However, not all scientists support this view, since there is uncertainty as to how strongly the fossil record is biased by the greater availability and preservation of recent geologic sections. Some scientists believe that corrected for sampling artifacts, modern biodiversity may not be much different from biodiversity 300 million years ago., whereas others consider the fossil record reasonably reflective of the diversification of life. Estimates of the present global macroscopic species diversity vary from 2 million to 100 million, with a best estimate of somewhere near 9 million, the vast majority arthropods. Diversity appears to increase continually in the absence of natural selection.\n<Assistant>Noted. I'll remember these details.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-07 00:00]\n<User>Let me update you with some new information:\nAgricultural diversity can also be divided by whether it is \u2018planned\u2019 diversity or \u2018associated\u2019 diversity. This is a functional classification that we impose and not an intrinsic feature of life or diversity. Planned diversity includes the crops which a farmer has encouraged, planted or raised (e.g.: crops, covers, symbionts and livestock, among others), which can be contrasted with the associated diversity that arrives among the crops, uninvited (e.g.: herbivores, weed species and pathogens, among others).\n\nBiodiversity's relevance to human health is becoming an international political issue, as scientific evidence builds on the global health implications of biodiversity loss. This issue is closely linked with the issue of climate change, as many of the anticipated health risks of climate change are associated with changes in biodiversity (e.g. changes in populations and distribution of disease vectors, scarcity of fresh water, impacts on agricultural biodiversity and food resources etc.) This is because the species most likely to disappear are those that buffer against infectious disease transmission, while surviving species tend to be the ones that increase disease transmission, such as that of West Nile Virus, Lyme disease and Hantavirus, according to a study done co-authored by Felicia Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College, and Drew Harvell, associate director for Environment of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) at Cornell University.\n\nSince life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion\u2014a period during which the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. In the Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian\u2013Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years. The most recent, the Cretaceous\u2013Paleogene extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago and has often attracted more attention than others because it resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.\n\nThe number of species invasions has been on the rise at least since the beginning of the 1900s. Species are increasingly being moved by humans (on purpose and accidentally). In some cases the invaders are causing drastic changes and damage to their new habitats (e.g.: zebra mussels and the emerald ash borer in the Great Lakes region and the lion fish along the North American Atlantic coast). Some evidence suggests that invasive species are competitive in their new habitats because they are subject to less pathogen disturbance. Others report confounding evidence that occasionally suggest that species-rich communities harbor many native and exotic species simultaneously while some say that diverse ecosystems are more resilient and resist invasive plants and animals. An important question is, \"do invasive species cause extinctions?\" Many studies cite effects of invasive species on natives, but not extinctions. Invasive species seem to increase local (i.e.: alpha diversity) diversity, which decreases turnover of diversity (i.e.: beta diversity). Overall gamma diversity may be lowered because species are going extinct because of other causes, but even some of the most insidious invaders (e.g.: Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, chestnut blight in North America) have not caused their host species to become extinct. Extirpation, population decline, and homogenization of regional biodiversity are much more common. Human activities have frequently been the cause of invasive species circumventing their barriers, by introducing them for food and other purposes. Human activities therefore allow species to migrate to new areas (and thus become invasive) occurred on time scales much shorter than historically have been required for a species to extend its range.\n\nBrazil's Atlantic Forest is considered one such hotspot, containing roughly 20,000 plant species, 1,350 vertebrates, and millions of insects, about half of which occur nowhere else.[citation needed] The island of Madagascar and India are also particularly notable. Colombia is characterized by high biodiversity, with the highest rate of species by area unit worldwide and it has the largest number of endemics (species that are not found naturally anywhere else) of any country. About 10% of the species of the Earth can be found in Colombia, including over 1,900 species of bird, more than in Europe and North America combined, Colombia has 10% of the world\u2019s mammals species, 14% of the amphibian species, and 18% of the bird species of the world. Madagascar dry deciduous forests and lowland rainforests possess a high ratio of endemism.[citation needed] Since the island separated from mainland Africa 66 million years ago, many species and ecosystems have evolved independently.[citation needed] Indonesia's 17,000 islands cover 735,355 square miles (1,904,560 km2) and contain 10% of the world's flowering plants, 12% of mammals, and 17% of reptiles, amphibians and birds\u2014along with nearly 240 million people. Many regions of high biodiversity and/or endemism arise from specialized habitats which require unusual adaptations, for example, alpine environments in high mountains, or Northern European peat bogs.[citation needed]\n\nThe existence of a \"global carrying capacity\", limiting the amount of life that can live at once, is debated, as is the question of whether such a limit would also cap the number of species. While records of life in the sea shows a logistic pattern of growth, life on land (insects, plants and tetrapods)shows an exponential rise in diversity. As one author states, \"Tetrapods have not yet invaded 64 per cent of potentially habitable modes, and it could be that without human influence the ecological and taxonomic diversity of tetrapods would continue to increase in an exponential fashion until most or all of the available ecospace is filled.\"\n\nFrom 1950 to 2011, world population increased from 2.5 billion to 7 billion and is forecast to reach a plateau of more than 9 billion during the 21st century. Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told a parliamentary inquiry: \"It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor.\" At least until the middle of the 21st century, worldwide losses of pristine biodiverse land will probably depend much on the worldwide human birth rate.\n\nThe control of associated biodiversity is one of the great agricultural challenges that farmers face. On monoculture farms, the approach is generally to eradicate associated diversity using a suite of biologically destructive pesticides, mechanized tools and transgenic engineering techniques, then to rotate crops. Although some polyculture farmers use the same techniques, they also employ integrated pest management strategies as well as strategies that are more labor-intensive, but generally less dependent on capital, biotechnology and energy.\n\nNational park and nature reserve is the area selected by governments or private organizations for special protection against damage or degradation with the objective of biodiversity and landscape conservation. National parks are usually owned and managed by national or state governments. A limit is placed on the number of visitors permitted to enter certain fragile areas. Designated trails or roads are created. The visitors are allowed to enter only for study, cultural and recreation purposes. Forestry operations, grazing of animals and hunting of animals are prohibited. Exploitation of habitat or wildlife is banned.\n\nDuring the last century, decreases in biodiversity have been increasingly observed. In 2007, German Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel cited estimates that up to 30% of all species will be extinct by 2050. Of these, about one eighth of known plant species are threatened with extinction. Estimates reach as high as 140,000 species per year (based on Species-area theory). This figure indicates unsustainable ecological practices, because few species emerge each year.[citation needed] Almost all scientists acknowledge that the rate of species loss is greater now than at any time in human history, with extinctions occurring at rates hundreds of times higher than background extinction rates. As of 2012, some studies suggest that 25% of all mammal species could be extinct in 20 years.\n\nHabitat size and numbers of species are systematically related. Physically larger species and those living at lower latitudes or in forests or oceans are more sensitive to reduction in habitat area. Conversion to \"trivial\" standardized ecosystems (e.g., monoculture following deforestation) effectively destroys habitat for the more diverse species that preceded the conversion. In some countries lack of property rights or lax law/regulatory enforcement necessarily leads to biodiversity loss (degradation costs having to be supported by the community).[citation needed]\n<Assistant>Thank you for sharing. I've noted this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-08 00:00]\n<User>The following are some more news I learnt:\nNot all introduced species are invasive, nor all invasive species deliberately introduced. In cases such as the zebra mussel, invasion of US waterways was unintentional. In other cases, such as mongooses in Hawaii, the introduction is deliberate but ineffective (nocturnal rats were not vulnerable to the diurnal mongoose). In other cases, such as oil palms in Indonesia and Malaysia, the introduction produces substantial economic benefits, but the benefits are accompanied by costly unintended consequences.\n\nLess than 1% of all species that have been described have been studied beyond simply noting their existence. The vast majority of Earth's species are microbial. Contemporary biodiversity physics is \"firmly fixated on the visible [macroscopic] world\". For example, microbial life is metabolically and environmentally more diverse than multicellular life (see e.g., extremophile). \"On the tree of life, based on analyses of small-subunit ribosomal RNA, visible life consists of barely noticeable twigs. The inverse relationship of size and population recurs higher on the evolutionary ladder\u2014\"to a first approximation, all multicellular species on Earth are insects\". Insect extinction rates are high\u2014supporting the Holocene extinction hypothesis. \n\nThe number and variety of plants, animals and other organisms that exist is known as biodiversity. It is an essential component of nature and it ensures the survival of human species by providing food, fuel, shelter, medicines and other resources to mankind. The richness of biodiversity depends on the climatic conditions and area of the region. All species of plants taken together are known as flora and about 70,000 species of plants are known till date. All species of animals taken together are known as fauna which includes birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, etc.\n\nThe term biological diversity was used first by wildlife scientist and conservationist Raymond F. Dasmann in the year 1968 lay book A Different Kind of Country advocating conservation. The term was widely adopted only after more than a decade, when in the 1980s it came into common usage in science and environmental policy. Thomas Lovejoy, in the foreword to the book Conservation Biology, introduced the term to the scientific community. Until then the term \"natural diversity\" was common, introduced by The Science Division of The Nature Conservancy in an important 1975 study, \"The Preservation of Natural Diversity.\" By the early 1980s TNC's Science program and its head, Robert E. Jenkins, Lovejoy and other leading conservation scientists at the time in America advocated the use of the term \"biological diversity\".\n\nBiodiversity provides critical support for drug discovery and the availability of medicinal resources. A significant proportion of drugs are derived, directly or indirectly, from biological sources: at least 50% of the pharmaceutical compounds on the US market are derived from plants, animals, and micro-organisms, while about 80% of the world population depends on medicines from nature (used in either modern or traditional medical practice) for primary healthcare. Only a tiny fraction of wild species has been investigated for medical potential. Biodiversity has been critical to advances throughout the field of bionics. Evidence from market analysis and biodiversity science indicates that the decline in output from the pharmaceutical sector since the mid-1980s can be attributed to a move away from natural product exploration (\"bioprospecting\") in favor of genomics and synthetic chemistry, indeed claims about the value of undiscovered pharmaceuticals may not provide enough incentive for companies in free markets to search for them because of the high cost of development; meanwhile, natural products have a long history of supporting significant economic and health innovation. Marine ecosystems are particularly important, although inappropriate bioprospecting can increase biodiversity loss, as well as violating the laws of the communities and states from which the resources are taken.\n\nIn agriculture and animal husbandry, the Green Revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield. Often hybridized breeds originated in developed countries and were further hybridized with local varieties in the developing world to create high yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases. Local governments and industry have been pushing hybridization. Formerly huge gene pools of various wild and indigenous breeds have collapsed causing widespread genetic erosion and genetic pollution. This has resulted in loss of genetic diversity and biodiversity as a whole.\n\nOriginally based on the English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart on the right. The characters encoded are numbers 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, basic punctuation symbols, control codes that originated with Teletype machines, and a space. For example, lowercase j would become binary 1101010 and decimal 106. ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters: 33 are non-printing control characters (many now obsolete) that affect how text and space are processed and 95 printable characters, including the space (which is considered an invisible graphic:223).\n<Assistant>Perfect. I've stored this information in my memory.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-09 00:00]\n<User>I'd like to share some important information:\nThe code itself was patterned so that most control codes were together, and all graphic codes were together, for ease of identification. The first two columns (32 positions) were reserved for control characters.:220, 236\u2009\u00a7\u20098,9) The \"space\" character had to come before graphics to make sorting easier, so it became position 20hex;:237\u2009\u00a7\u200910 for the same reason, many special signs commonly used as separators were placed before digits. The committee decided it was important to support uppercase 64-character alphabets, and chose to pattern ASCII so it could be reduced easily to a usable 64-character set of graphic codes,:228, 237\u2009\u00a7\u200914 as was done in the DEC SIXBIT code. Lowercase letters were therefore not interleaved with uppercase. To keep options available for lowercase letters and other graphics, the special and numeric codes were arranged before the letters, and the letter A was placed in position 41hex to match the draft of the corresponding British standard.:238\u2009\u00a7\u200918 The digits 0\u20139 were arranged so they correspond to values in binary prefixed with 011, making conversion with binary-coded decimal straightforward.\n\nASCII was incorporated into the Unicode character set as the first 128 symbols, so the 7-bit ASCII characters have the same numeric codes in both sets. This allows UTF-8 to be backward compatible with 7-bit ASCII, as a UTF-8 file containing only ASCII characters is identical to an ASCII file containing the same sequence of characters. Even more importantly, forward compatibility is ensured as software that recognizes only 7-bit ASCII characters as special and does not alter bytes with the highest bit set (as is often done to support 8-bit ASCII extensions such as ISO-8859-1) will preserve UTF-8 data unchanged.\n\nWhen a Teletype 33 ASR equipped with the automatic paper tape reader received a Control-S (XOFF, an abbreviation for transmit off), it caused the tape reader to stop; receiving Control-Q (XON, \"transmit on\") caused the tape reader to resume. This technique became adopted by several early computer operating systems as a \"handshaking\" signal warning a sender to stop transmission because of impending overflow; it persists to this day in many systems as a manual output control technique. On some systems Control-S retains its meaning but Control-Q is replaced by a second Control-S to resume output. The 33 ASR also could be configured to employ Control-R (DC2) and Control-T (DC4) to start and stop the tape punch; on some units equipped with this function, the corresponding control character lettering on the keycap above the letter was TAPE and TAPE respectively.\n\nDEC operating systems (OS/8, RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS, TOPS-10, etc.) used both characters to mark the end of a line so that the console device (originally Teletype machines) would work. By the time so-called \"glass TTYs\" (later called CRTs or terminals) came along, the convention was so well established that backward compatibility necessitated continuing the convention. When Gary Kildall cloned RT-11 to create CP/M he followed established DEC convention. Until the introduction of PC DOS in 1981, IBM had no hand in this because their 1970s operating systems used EBCDIC instead of ASCII and they were oriented toward punch-card input and line printer output on which the concept of carriage return was meaningless. IBM's PC DOS (also marketed as MS-DOS by Microsoft) inherited the convention by virtue of being a clone of CP/M, and Windows inherited it from MS-DOS.\n\nC trigraphs were created to solve this problem for ANSI C, although their late introduction and inconsistent implementation in compilers limited their use. Many programmers kept their computers on US-ASCII, so plain-text in Swedish, German etc. (for example, in e-mail or Usenet) contained \"{, }\" and similar variants in the middle of words, something those programmers got used to. For example, a Swedish programmer mailing another programmer asking if they should go for lunch, could get \"N{ jag har sm|rg}sar.\" as the answer, which should be \"N\u00e4 jag har sm\u00f6rg\u00e5sar.\" meaning \"No I've got sandwiches.\"\n\nThe X3.2 subcommittee designed ASCII based on the earlier teleprinter encoding systems. Like other character encodings, ASCII specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and character symbols (i.e. graphemes and control characters). This allows digital devices to communicate with each other and to process, store, and communicate character-oriented information such as written language. Before ASCII was developed, the encodings in use included 26 alphabetic characters, 10 numerical digits, and from 11 to 25 special graphic symbols. To include all these, and control characters compatible with the Comit\u00e9 Consultatif International T\u00e9l\u00e9phonique et T\u00e9l\u00e9graphique (CCITT) International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) standard, Fieldata, and early EBCDIC, more than 64 codes were required for ASCII.\n\nASCII itself was first used commercially during 1963 as a seven-bit teleprinter code for American Telephone & Telegraph's TWX (TeletypeWriter eXchange) network. TWX originally used the earlier five-bit ITA2, which was also used by the competing Telex teleprinter system. Bob Bemer introduced features such as the escape sequence. His British colleague Hugh McGregor Ross helped to popularize this work \u2013  according to Bemer, \"so much so that the code that was to become ASCII was first called the Bemer-Ross Code in Europe\". Because of his extensive work on ASCII, Bemer has been called \"the father of ASCII.\"\n\nFor example, character 10 represents the \"line feed\" function (which causes a printer to advance its paper), and character 8 represents \"backspace\". RFC 2822 refers to control characters that do not include carriage return, line feed or white space as non-whitespace control characters. Except for the control characters that prescribe elementary line-oriented formatting, ASCII does not define any mechanism for describing the structure or appearance of text within a document. Other schemes, such as markup languages, address page and document layout and formatting.\n\nSome software assigned special meanings to ASCII characters sent to the software from the terminal. Operating systems from Digital Equipment Corporation, for example, interpreted DEL as an input character as meaning \"remove previously-typed input character\", and this interpretation also became common in Unix systems. Most other systems used BS for that meaning and used DEL to mean \"remove the character at the cursor\".[citation needed] That latter interpretation is the most common now.[citation needed]\n<Assistant>Excellent. I've documented all of this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-10 00:00]\n<User>I just discovered some interesting information:\nComputers attached to the ARPANET included machines running operating systems such as TOPS-10 and TENEX using CR-LF line endings, machines running operating systems such as Multics using LF line endings, and machines running operating systems such as OS/360 that represented lines as a character count followed by the characters of the line and that used EBCDIC rather than ASCII. The Telnet protocol defined an ASCII \"Network Virtual Terminal\" (NVT), so that connections between hosts with different line-ending conventions and character sets could be supported by transmitting a standard text format over the network. Telnet used ASCII along with CR-LF line endings, and software using other conventions would translate between the local conventions and the NVT. The File Transfer Protocol adopted the Telnet protocol, including use of the Network Virtual Terminal, for use when transmitting commands and transferring data in the default ASCII mode. This adds complexity to implementations of those protocols, and to other network protocols, such as those used for E-mail and the World Wide Web, on systems not using the NVT's CR-LF line-ending convention.\n\nFrom early in its development, ASCII was intended to be just one of several national variants of an international character code standard, ultimately published as ISO/IEC 646 (1972), which would share most characters in common but assign other locally useful characters to several code points reserved for \"national use.\" However, the four years that elapsed between the publication of ASCII-1963 and ISO's first acceptance of an international recommendation during 1967 caused ASCII's choices for the national use characters to seem to be de facto standards for the world, causing confusion and incompatibility once other countries did begin to make their own assignments to these code points.\n\nMost early home computer systems developed their own 8-bit character sets containing line-drawing and game glyphs, and often filled in some or all of the control characters from 0\u201331 with more graphics. Kaypro CP/M computers used the \"upper\" 128 characters for the Greek alphabet. The IBM PC defined code page 437, which replaced the control-characters with graphic symbols such as smiley faces, and mapped additional graphic characters to the upper 128 positions. Operating systems such as DOS supported these code pages, and manufacturers of IBM PCs supported them in hardware. Digital Equipment Corporation developed the Multinational Character Set (DEC-MCS) for use in the popular VT220 terminal as one of the first extensions designed more for international languages than for block graphics. The Macintosh defined Mac OS Roman and Postscript also defined a set, both of these contained both international letters and typographic punctuation marks instead of graphics, more like modern character sets.\n\nASCII (i/\u02c8\u00e6ski/ ASS-kee), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character-encoding scheme (the IANA prefers the name US-ASCII). ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, though they support many additional characters. ASCII was the most common character encoding on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when it was surpassed by UTF-8, which is fully backward compatibe to ASCII.\n\nThe committee debated the possibility of a shift function (like in ITA2), which would allow more than 64 codes to be represented by a six-bit code. In a shifted code, some character codes determine choices between options for the following character codes. It allows compact encoding, but is less reliable for data transmission as an error in transmitting the shift code typically makes a long part of the transmission unreadable. The standards committee decided against shifting, and so ASCII required at least a seven-bit code.:215, 236\u2009\u00a7\u20094\n\nMany more of the control codes have been given meanings quite different from their original ones. The \"escape\" character (ESC, code 27), for example, was intended originally to allow sending other control characters as literals instead of invoking their meaning. This is the same meaning of \"escape\" encountered in URL encodings, C language strings, and other systems where certain characters have a reserved meaning. Over time this meaning has been co-opted and has eventually been changed. In modern use, an ESC sent to the terminal usually indicates the start of a command sequence, usually in the form of a so-called \"ANSI escape code\" (or, more properly, a \"Control Sequence Introducer\") beginning with ESC followed by a \"[\" (left-bracket) character. An ESC sent from the terminal is most often used as an out-of-band character used to terminate an operation, as in the TECO and vi text editors. In graphical user interface (GUI) and windowing systems, ESC generally causes an application to abort its current operation or to exit (terminate) altogether.\n\nOlder operating systems such as TOPS-10, along with CP/M, tracked file length only in units of disk blocks and used Control-Z (SUB) to mark the end of the actual text in the file. For this reason, EOF, or end-of-file, was used colloquially and conventionally as a three-letter acronym for Control-Z instead of SUBstitute. The end-of-text code (ETX), also known as Control-C, was inappropriate for a variety of reasons, while using Z as the control code to end a file is analogous to it ending the alphabet and serves as a very convenient mnemonic aid. A historically common and still prevalent convention uses the ETX code convention to interrupt and halt a program via an input data stream, usually from a keyboard.\n\nASCII developed from telegraphic codes. Its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began on October 6, 1960, with the first meeting of the American Standards Association's (ASA) X3.2 subcommittee. The first edition of the standard was published during 1963, underwent a major revision during 1967, and experienced its most recent update during 1986. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting (i.e., alphabetization) of lists, and added features for devices other than teleprinters.\n\nThe committee considered an eight-bit code, since eight bits (octets) would allow two four-bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary-coded decimal. However, it would require all data transmission to send eight bits when seven could suffice. The committee voted to use a seven-bit code to minimize costs associated with data transmission. Since perforated tape at the time could record eight bits in one position, it also allowed for a parity bit for error checking if desired.:217, 236\u2009\u00a7\u20095 Eight-bit machines (with octets as the native data type) that did not use parity checking typically set the eighth bit to 0.\n<Assistant>Understood. I'll keep these facts for future reference."]
[{"question": "What is the lowest level of sensitivity, in micrometers, for InGaAs?", "answer": "950"}, {"question": "What is the nearest wavelength to the radiation that a human eye can see?", "answer": "Near-infrared"}, {"question": "When was the first major revision of the code done?", "answer": "1967"}, {"question": "What is the technique that involves imaging with terahertz radiation?", "answer": "'T-ray' imaging"}, {"question": "Who usually owns and manages National parks?", "answer": "national or state governments"}, {"question": "How many endemic floral species do forests harbor?", "answer": "5150"}, {"question": "What shows up particularly well in reflectograms?", "answer": "carbon black"}, {"question": "What type of animal shows an exponential rise in diversity?", "answer": "life on land"}, {"question": "In which year was the study published that found biodiversity and genetic diversity are codependent?", "answer": "2007"}, {"question": "Why was the code patterned so that most codes were together?", "answer": "for ease of identification"}, {"question": "Who surpassed ASCII?", "answer": "UTF-8"}, {"question": "Where are the most threatened ecosystems found?", "answer": "in fresh water"}, {"question": "What percentage accounts for the terrestrial wildlife gone?", "answer": "39%"}, {"question": "who did the railroads sell cheap lands to?", "answer": "immigrants"}, {"question": "Where does the Prunus spinosa leaf much sooner?", "answer": "In Belgium"}, {"question": "What programming did IBM use in the 1970s?", "answer": "EBCDIC"}, {"question": "What year was they study done by the World Wildlife Fund?", "answer": "2014"}, {"question": "What objects are notably bright in near IR?", "answer": "Leaves"}, {"question": "What did the high yield strains become resistant to?", "answer": "local climate and diseases"}, {"question": "What is the name of the technique used in scanners to minimize the effects of dust and scratches?", "answer": "Infrared cleaning"}, {"question": "how long did the person have to live on the land?", "answer": "five years"}, {"question": "What type of diversity includes the crops which a farmer has encouraged, planted or raised?", "answer": "Planned diversity"}, {"question": "Who describes the \"Evil Quartet\"?", "answer": "Jared Diamond"}, {"question": "What issue is closely linked with changes in biodiversity?", "answer": "climate change"}, {"question": "What provides critical support for drug discovery and the availability of medicinal resources?", "answer": "Biodiversity"}, {"question": "What can threaten endemic species with extinction?", "answer": "genetic pollution"}, {"question": "What ensures the survival of human species by providing food, shelter, other resources to mankind?", "answer": "biodiversity"}, {"question": "What is a common name for missiles that make use of infrared seeking?", "answer": "heat-seekers"}, {"question": "Who introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community?", "answer": "Thomas Lovejoy"}, {"question": "Along with Cirrus, what types of clouds are cold and high?", "answer": "Cumulonimbus"}, {"question": "What farms use biologically destructive pesticides", "answer": "monoculture farms"}, {"question": "What was ASCII based on?", "answer": "teleprinter encoding systems"}, {"question": "What is the estimated weight of the total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth?", "answer": "50 billion tonnes"}, {"question": "What type of biodiversity happens near the equator?", "answer": "Terrestrial biodiversity"}, {"question": "When was the Permian\u2013Triassic extinction event?", "answer": "251 million years ago"}, {"question": "What casued the automatic paper tape reader to stop?", "answer": "a Control-S"}, {"question": "What else is the end-of-text code known as?", "answer": "Control-C"}, {"question": "what diet did the mammals switch to from browsing diets?", "answer": "grazing diets"}, {"question": "What model implies a second-order positive feedback?", "answer": "Hyperbolic model"}, {"question": "Where was the letter A places in position?", "answer": "41hex"}, {"question": "What discipline uses infrared telescopes to see through molecular clouds?", "answer": "Infrared astronomy"}, {"question": "Along with a chemical process, what type of process is used by night vision devices to convert infrared into visible light?", "answer": "electrical"}, {"question": "Along with replacement via inpainting, what procedure is used in infrared cleaning to remove the effect of scratches and dust?", "answer": "scaling"}, {"question": "When was ISO/IEC 646 published?", "answer": "1972"}, {"question": "Who is the father of ASCII?", "answer": "Bob Bemer"}, {"question": "What type of diversity arrives uninvited?", "answer": "associated diversity"}, {"question": "Who is the German Federal Environment Minister?", "answer": "Sigmar Gabriel"}, {"question": "What percentage of biodiversity has the planet lost since 1970", "answer": "52%"}, {"question": "What limits the amount of life that can live at once on Earth?", "answer": "global carrying capacity"}, {"question": "What type of a society primarily grows monocultures?", "answer": "agricultural society"}, {"question": "What is the ASCII based on?", "answer": "English alphabet"}, {"question": "Who is the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government?", "answer": "Sir David King"}, {"question": "What may unintentionally injure a species that depends on the species it replaces?", "answer": "an introduced species"}, {"question": "How many characters are printable characters?", "answer": "95 printable characters"}, {"question": "Who has been pushing for hybridization?", "answer": "Local governments and industry"}, {"question": "What farmers use integrated pest management strategies?", "answer": "polyculture farmers"}, {"question": "What animal unintentionally invaded the US waterways?", "answer": "the zebra mussel"}, {"question": "What did Gary Kildall clone to create CP/M?", "answer": "RT-11"}, {"question": "What is another term for infrared homing?", "answer": "Infrared tracking"}, {"question": "Along with pyrometers, what devices can receive inaccurate results if emissivity is not set correctly?", "answer": "infrared cameras"}, {"question": "What irradiates clouds of gas in the galaxy and makes them glow?", "answer": "imbedded stars"}, {"question": "What farmers are generally less dependent on capital, biotechnology and energy?", "answer": "polyculture farmers"}, {"question": "What are glass TTYs also known as?", "answer": "CRTs or terminals"}, {"question": "What is systematically related to the numbers of species?", "answer": "Habitat size"}, {"question": "Who else adopted this practice from Telnet?", "answer": "The File Transfer Protocol"}, {"question": "What character represents the \"line feed\" function?", "answer": "character 10"}, {"question": "What was created to solve the problem for ANSI C?", "answer": "C trigraphs"}, {"question": "What object emits thermal radiation in the X-ray spectrum?", "answer": "the solar corona"}, {"question": "What devices are often equipped with infrared blockers?", "answer": "Digital cameras"}, {"question": "What percentage accounts for the marine wildlife gone?", "answer": "39%"}, {"question": "Who conducted the 2007 study?", "answer": "National Science Foundation"}, {"question": "What field has biodiversity made critical advances in?", "answer": "bionics"}, {"question": "What is the common range of emitted radiation of room temperature objects, in micrometers?", "answer": "8 to 25"}, {"question": "When was the period where the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared?", "answer": "the Cambrian explosion"}, {"question": "What invaders are causing changes along the North American Atlantic coast?", "answer": "lion fish"}, {"question": "What animals were not vulnerable to the mongoose?", "answer": "nocturnal rats"}, {"question": "What device did Herschel use to discover the infrared?", "answer": "a prism"}, {"question": "What animal intentionally invaded Hawaii?", "answer": "mongooses"}, {"question": "How many plant species are close to extinction?", "answer": "about one eighth"}, {"question": "What century started the increase of species invasions?", "answer": "1900s"}, {"question": "What type of animal shows a logistic pattern of growth?", "answer": "life in the sea"}, {"question": "What reflectance is measured from a semiconductor wafer's surface to determine the index of refraction?", "answer": "light"}, {"question": "What model is widely used in macrosociology?", "answer": "hyperbolic model"}, {"question": "What year did Gabriel estimate 30% of of all species will be extinct by?", "answer": "2050"}, {"question": "What letter represents the extinction Coefficient?", "answer": "k"}, {"question": "What did Herschel call the infrared spectrum?", "answer": "Calorific Rays"}, {"question": "Along with water vapor, what atmospheric substance primarily absorbs the infrared emitted by the Earth?", "answer": "cloud droplets"}, {"question": "Up to what wavelength does the human eye perceive certain intense lights as being dull red in color?", "answer": "1050 nm"}, {"question": "what mainly opened the great plains for settlement?", "answer": "railroads"}, {"question": "How many positions are in the first two columns?", "answer": "32 positions"}, {"question": "What did many programmers keep their computers on?", "answer": "US-ASCII"}, {"question": "Along with aircraft and people, what objects notably create and retain heat?", "answer": "vehicle engines"}, {"question": "What describes Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, human over-Population, and Over-harvesting?", "answer": "HIPPO"}, {"question": "What plays a vital role in harbouring floral and faunal species?", "answer": "The forests"}, {"question": "What did Macintosh use instead of graphics?", "answer": "typographic punctuation marks"}, {"question": "To somewhat avoid the water vapor in the atmosphere, where can an observatory be sited?", "answer": "at a high altitude"}, {"question": "How many specific characters are there in the ASCII code?", "answer": "128 specified characters"}, {"question": "What sort of light is generated by IR lasers?", "answer": "near-IR"}, {"question": "What was ASCII developed from?", "answer": "telegraphic codes"}, {"question": "Along with the emission peaks and vs. bands mechanisms, what other physical mechanism is used to define near-infrared?", "answer": "water absorption"}]