Channel (programming)

In computing, a channel is a model for interprocess communication and synchronization via message passing. A message may be sent over a channel, and another process or thread is able to receive messages sent over a channel it has a reference to, as a stream. Different implementations of channels may be buffered or not, and either synchronous or asynchronous.

Channels are fundamental to the process calculus approach to concurrency, and originated in communicating sequential processes (CSP), a formal model for concurrency, and has been used in many derived languages, such as occam, and Limbo programming language (via Newsqueak and the Alef programming language). They are also used in the C programming language threading library libthread, and in Plan 9 from Bell Labs, which uses libthread, as well as in Stackless Python and the Go programming language.

Channel implementations

Channels modeled after the CSP model are inherently synchronous: a process waiting to receive an object from a channel will block until the object is sent. This is also called rendezvous behaviour. Typical supported operations are presented below using the example of the libthread channel API.

Price channels

A price channel is a pair of parallel trend lines that form a chart pattern for a stock or commodity. Channels may be horizontal, ascending or descending. When prices pass through and stay through a trendline representing support or resistance, the trend is said to be broken and there is a "breakout".

References

See also

Meridian (Chinese medicine)

The meridian system (simplified Chinese: 经络; traditional Chinese: 經絡; pinyin: jīngluò, also called channel network) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) belief about a path through which the life-energy known as "qi" flows.

A 2001 review found little evidence to support the existence or function of qi or acupuncture meridians. However, more recent studies confirm that the meridians and acupoints have many biophysical properties such as electric, thermal, acoustic, optical, magnetic, isotopic, and myoelectric characteristics, which are different from those of non-acupuncture points.

Main concepts

The meridian network is typically divided into 2 categories, the jingmai (經脈) or meridian channels and the luomai (絡脈) or associated vessels (sometimes called "collaterals"). The jingmai contain the 12 tendinomuscular meridians, the 12 divergent meridians, the 12 principal meridians, the 8 extraordinary vessels as well as the Huato channel, a set of bilateral points on the lower back whose discovery is attributed to the famous physician in ancient China. The collaterals contain 15 major arteries that connect the 12 principal meridians in various ways, in addition to the interaction with their associated internal organs and other related internal structures. The collateral system also incorporates a branching expanse of capillary like vessels which spread throughout the body, namely in the 12 cutaneous regions as well as emanating from each point on the principal meridians. If one counts the number of unique points on each meridian, the total comes to 361, although 365 is usually used since it coincides with the number of days in a year. Note that this method ignores the fact that the bulk of acupoints are bilateral, making the actual total 670.

Mother Nature

Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth-Mother), is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it ,in the form of the mother.

Western tradition history

The word "nature" comes from the Latin word, "natura," meaning birth or character (see nature (innate)). In English its first recorded use (in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world) was in 1266 A.D.. "Natura", and the personification of Mother Nature, was widely popular in the Middle Ages. As a concept, seated between the properly divine and the human, it can be traced to Ancient Greece, though Earth (or "Eorthe" in the Old English period) may have been personified as a goddess. The Norse also had a goddess called Jord (or Earth).

The earliest written dated literal references to the term "Mother Earth" occur in Mycenaean Greek. Ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia", written in Linear B syllabic script (13th or 12th century BC). The various myths of nature goddesses such as Inanna/Ishtar (myths and hymns attested on Mesopotamian tablets as early as the 3rd millennium BC) show that the personification of the creative and nurturing sides of nature as female deities has deep roots. In Greece, the pre-Socratic philosophers had "invented" nature when they abstracted the entirety of phenomena of the world as singular: physis, and this was inherited by Aristotle. Later medieval Christian thinkers did not see nature as inclusive of everything, but thought that she had been created by God; her place lay on earth, below the unchanging heavens and moon. Nature lay somewhere in the center, with agents above her (angels), and below her (demons and hell). For the medieval mind she was only a personification, not a goddess.

Gewürztraminer

Gewürztraminer [ɡəˈvʏɐtstʁaˈmiːnɐ]^[p] is an aromatic wine grape variety, used in white wines, and performs best in cooler climates. In English, it is sometimes referred to colloquially as Gewürz (this is never the case in German, because "Gewürz" means "herb" or "spice"), and in French it is written Gewurztraminer (without the umlaut). Gewürztraminer is a variety with a pink to red skin colour, which makes it a "white wine grape" as opposed to the blue to black-skinned varieties commonly referred to as "red wine grapes". The variety has high natural sugar and the wines are white and usually off-dry, with a flamboyant bouquet of lychees. Indeed, Gewürztraminer and lychees share the same aroma compounds. Dry Gewürztraminers may also have aromas of roses, passion fruit and floral notes. It is not uncommon to notice some spritz (fine bubbles on the inside of the glass).

Gewürztraminer's sweetness may offset the spice in Asian cuisine. It goes well with Hirtenkäse,Münster cheese, and fleshy, fatty (oily) wild game.

Nature (Tobler essay)

"Nature" ("Die Natur") is an essay by Georg Christoph Tobler which is often incorrectly attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was first published in 1783 in the Tiefurt Journal. Tobler wrote the essay after repeated conversations with Goethe.

The essay begins:

In the first issue of Nature magazine, published on Nov 4, 1869, T. H. Huxley submitted an English translation of the essay, titled "Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe".

Sigmund Freud wrote that a public recitation of the essay, which Freud refers to as "the incomparably beautiful essay by Goethe", led him to study medicine.

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