Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.
A refreshable braille display or braille terminal is an electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters, usually by means of round-tipped pins raised through holes in a flat surface. Visually impaired computer users who cannot use a standard computer monitor can use it to read text output. Deafblind computer users may also use refreshable braille displays.
The Venus flytrap is a carnivorous plant native to subtropical wetlands on the East Coast of the United States in North Carolina and South Carolina. It catches its prey—chiefly insects and arachnids—with a trapping structure formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves, which is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces.
Quantum dots (QDs), also called semiconductor nanocrystals, are semiconductor particles a few nanometres in size, having optical and electronic properties that differ from those of larger particles as a result of quantum mechanical effects. They are a central topic in nanotechnology and materials science. When the quantum dots are illuminated by UV light, an electron in the quantum dot can be excited to a state of higher energy. In the case of a semiconducting quantum dot, this process corresponds to the transition of an electron from the valence band to the conductance band. The excited electron can drop back into the valence band releasing its energy as light. This light emission (photoluminescence) is illustrated in the figure on the right. The color of that light depends on the energy difference between the conductance band and the valence band, or the transition between discrete energy states when the band structure is no longer well-defined in QDs.
New York Point is a braille-like system of tactile writing for the blind invented by William Bell Wait (1839–1916), a teacher in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. The system used one to four pairs of points set side by side, each containing one or two dots. The most common letters are written with the fewest points, a strategy also employed by the competing American Braille.
The pigpen cipher is a geometric simple substitution cipher, which exchanges letters for symbols which are fragments of a grid. The example key shows one way the letters can be assigned to the grid.
Braille ASCII is a subset of the ASCII character set which uses 64 of the printable ASCII characters to represent all possible dot combinations in six-dot braille. It was developed around 1969 and, despite originally being known as North American Braille ASCII, it is now used internationally.
The 1959 Pacific hurricane season saw 15 storms develop, 5 of which became hurricanes, and 3 of those became major hurricanes. The season officially started on May 15, 1959 in the Eastern Pacific, and ended on November 30, 1959.
A quantum dot solar cell (QDSC) is a solar cell design that uses quantum dots as the captivating photovoltaic material. It attempts to replace bulk materials such as silicon, copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) or cadmium telluride (CdTe). Quantum dots have bandgaps that are adjustable across a wide range of energy levels by changing their size. In bulk materials, the bandgap is fixed by the choice of material(s). This property makes quantum dots attractive for multi-junction solar cells, where a variety of materials are used to improve efficiency by harvesting multiple portions of the solar spectrum.
Nephrocytium is a genus of green algae in the class Chlorophyceae. Formerly placed in the family Oocystaceae, it is currently placed in its own family, Nephrocytiaceae.
The slate and stylus are tools used by blind people to write text that they can read without assistance. Invented by Charles Barbier as the tool for writing letters that could be read by touch, the slate and stylus allow for a quick, easy, convenient and constant method of making embossed printing for Braille character encoding. Prior methods of making raised printing for the blind required a movable type printing press.
Arequipa is a genus of moths of the family Crambidae. It contains only one species, Arequipa turbatella, which is found in North America, where it has been recorded from Alabama, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Quebec and West Virginia.
English Braille, also known as Grade 2 Braille, is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters (phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Braille letters, such as ⠡⟨ch⟩, correspond to more than one letter in print.
Acraea zetes, the large spotted acraea, is a butterfly in the family Nymphalidae which is native to sub-Saharan Africa.
Louis Braille's original publication, Procedure for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong in Dots (1829), credits Barbier's night writing as being the basis for the braille script. It differed in a fundamental way from modern braille: It contained nine decades (series) of characters rather than the modern five, utilizing dashes as well as dots. Braille recognized, however, that the dashes were problematic, being difficult to distinguish from the dots in practice, and those characters were abandoned in the second edition of the book.
Braille Kanji is a system of braille for transcribing written Japanese. It was devised in 1969 by Tai'ichi Kawakami, a teacher at the Osaka School for the Blind, and was still being revised in 1991. It supplements Japanese Braille by providing a means of directly encoding kanji characters without having to first convert them to kana. It uses an 8-dot braille cell, with the lower six dots corresponding to the cells of standard Japanese Braille, and the upper two dots indicating the constituent parts of the kanji. The upper dots are numbered 0 and 7, the opposite convention of 8-dot braille in Western countries, where the extra dots are added to the bottom of the cell. A kanji will be transcribed by anywhere from one to three braille cells.
Monochroa quinquepunctella is a moth of the family Gelechiidae. It is found in North America, where it has been recorded from Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Quebec, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Glyphidocera dimorphella is a moth in the family Autostichidae. It was described by August Busck in 1907. It is found in North America, where it has been recorded from Florida, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas.
Sceptea aequepulvella is a moth in the family Autostichidae. It was described by Vactor Tousey Chambers in 1872. It is found in North America, where it has been recorded from California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Antaeotricha unipunctella is a moth in the family Depressariidae. It was described by James Brackenridge Clemens in 1863. It is found in North America, where it has been recorded from Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
