Intellect PlusCards starting with P
1,597 cards. Page 27 of 27.
Punta Arenas strings ropes between buildings so pedestrians survive the windOn the Strait of Magellan, gusts can reach 130 km/h, so officials in Punta Arenas put up ropes between downtown buildings for people to hold. The Chilean city, founded as a penal …
Punta Cana was a nameless stretch of coast until two investors bought it in the 1960sIn the late 1960s the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic was undeveloped shoreline five hours' drive from the nearest city. A young Dominican entrepreneur and a New York labour…
Puppis is the massive stern of a legendary ship that once sailed the stars.Once part of the colossal Argo Navis, the constellation Puppis represents the stern of Jason's mythical ship. Though it was carved out of a larger celestial entity in the 18th cen…
Puppy Linux: The Entire Operating System That Fits Inside Your Computer's RAMPuppy Linux is a uniquely lightweight operating system designed to run entirely from your computer's random-access memory. By loading the system into a ramdisk upon boot, it achie…
Purcell packed a uniquely English Baroque into thirty-six yearsHenry Purcell, born beside Westminster Abbey in 1659, fused French and Italian colors into a voice still called distinctly English. Dido and Aeneas, The Fairy Queen, and more than…
Purdue paid for the plane Amelia Earhart flew on her final attemptIn 1936 Purdue University's research foundation bought the Lockheed Electra that Amelia Earhart took on her round-the-world attempt. She had joined the faculty a year earlier, adv…
Pure Land Buddhism offers a path to enlightenment for the unlearned and unethical alike.In East Asian Pure Land traditions, the path to Buddhahood is not reserved for the elite. By reciting the name of Buddha Amitabha, even those burdened by heavy karma can seek rebi…
Pure math chases beauty first—and still powers RSA laterPure mathematics studies ideas for their own sake, not for an immediate gadget. Greeks already split number theory from practical reckoning; around 1900 paradoxes and strange geom…
Pure water can stay liquid far below zero, down to about −48°C.Water does not freeze just because it hits 0°C. Ice needs a seed to start growing on, such as a speck of dust or a scratch. Take the seeds away and water stays liquid far below fr…
Pure water is a surprisingly poor conductor of electricity, unlike the water we drink.While we often associate water with electrical hazards, pure water is actually a poor conductor. The secret lies in removing the ions that carry current. From pharmaceutical manuf…
Purifying tin selenide enables polycrystalline materials to outperform single crystalsResearchers who purified hole-doped tin selenide removed surface tin oxide contamination from polycrystalline samples and found this boosted their thermoelectric performance. The …
Purine molecules act as chemical messengers across the body's tissuesA review of research on purines and their derivatives, including adenosine and ATP, describes how these molecules act beyond fueling cells: as chemical messengers that bind recept…
Purines are the essential building blocks of life, yet they can also cause gout.Purines are nitrogen-containing compounds fundamental to DNA and RNA, acting as the structural foundation for all living organisms. While your body relies on them for metabolic si…
Puritans borrowed a Lincolnshire market town’s name in 1630Boston, Massachusetts’s capital and largest city, was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritans who named it after Boston in Lincolnshire, itself a shortening of St. Bo…
Puritans were not the joyless scolds of modern myth"Puritan" began as an insult for English Protestants who thought the Elizabethan church still smelled of Rome. They later ran a revolutionary state, peopled New England, and then …
Puroresu is not just performance; it is a rigorous combat sport rooted in fighting spirit.While Western wrestling often leans into scripted theatrics, Japan’s puroresu treats the ring as a site of legitimate competition. By blending martial arts discipline with intense…
Purple became the colour of emperors because it came from rotting sea snails.Tyrian purple was squeezed from the glands of predatory sea snails. One estimate puts it at about 12,000 snails for just 1.4 grams of dye, enough to trim a single garment. The dye…
Purpose and profit are not enemies: how great companies grow the total pieConventional wisdom suggests businesses must choose between serving society and maximizing shareholder returns. Alex Edmans argues this is a false trade-off. By focusing on growin…
Purse once meant coins; handbag swallowed the restIn North America 'purse' often means what others call a handbag: a handled, medium-to-large carryall for personal items. Historically a purse was a small coin bag, and in much of …
Pushing the Boundaries of What Science Deems PossibleScience thrives on the extreme, constantly redefining our understanding of scale and time. This video explores three specific breakthroughs from 2019 that successfully pushed the …
Pushkin's African great-grandfather became a general of imperial RussiaAs a boy, Abram Gannibal was seized by Ottoman forces, then bought through a bribe and sent to Peter the Great as a court curiosity. Peter became his godfather instead. Gannibal w…- Pushkin's African great-grandfather served Peter the GreatRussia's Romantic giant, born in Moscow in 1799, descended through his mother from Abram Gannibal, an African page transferred to Peter I after Ottoman captivity. Nabokov doubted …
Put just 23 people in a room and a shared birthday becomes likely.Ask people how many strangers you need for a better-than-even chance that two share a birthday, and most guess hundreds or thousands. The real answer is 23. The trick is that you …
Putian: A Chinese City Defined by Mazu Pilgrims, Counterfeit Shoes, and Private HospitalsNestled in Fujian Province, Putian is a city of striking contrasts. It is revered as the spiritual birthplace of the goddess Mazu, drawing thousands of pilgrims annually. Yet, it …
Puzzle began as a verb for bafflement in the 1590sPuzzles dare you to restore hidden order—whether sliding wood, chasing a proof, or answering a riddle of logic. Most exist for play, yet a few begin as stubborn mathematical quest…
PVC was first spotted as white gunk in a flask left in sunlightIn 1835 the French chemist Henri Victor Regnault left vinyl chloride sitting in the sun and later found a white solid at the bottom of the flask. It was polyvinyl chloride, now th…
Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani: The Indian Supernatural Drama That Reimagined Vampire LorePremiering in 2010, this ambitious Indian television series brought the supernatural romance genre to a new audience. Inspired by global hits like The Vampire Diaries and Twilight…
Pyatigorsk: The Russian spa city named for five peaks and defined by mineral waters.Nestled at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, Pyatigorsk has evolved from an 18th-century fortress into a premier health destination. Famous for its therapeutic springs and tempe…
Pyramid builders at Giza drew a daily ration of nearly four litres of beerEgyptian records show the workers who built the Giza pyramids received close to four litres of beer a day, and a modern recreation of the recipe came out at about 5 percent alcoho…
Pyromania is a rare impulse-control disorder, not a synonym for criminal arson.Pyromania is a psychiatric condition defined by an uncontrollable urge to set fires, often driven by internal tension rather than external gain. Unlike arsonists, who act for prof…
Pyroxene means fire stranger, a name born from a geological misunderstandingEarly mineralogists found crystals sealed inside volcanic glass and assumed they were intruders, impurities in the melt. They named them pyroxenes, from Greek words for fire and s…
Pyrrho, the first Greek sceptic, marched to India with Alexander the GreatPyrrho of Elis wrote nothing at all, yet a whole school of doubt carries his name. He travelled with Alexander's army as far as India, and later taught that peace of mind comes fr…
Pyrrhus beat Rome in battle so expensively that his name became a warningPyrrhus of Epirus defeated Roman armies at Heraclea and Asculum, yet each victory cost him so dearly that it weakened him more than his enemy. Those battles gave the world the phr…
Pythagoras and Plato believed in rebirth long before most Westerners heard of karmaBelief in life after death splits into two great families. In one, the dead travel to another realm, sorted by gods according to how they lived. In the other, they come back in ne…
Pythagoras may not have discovered his own theorem, and his life is mostly legendEvery schoolchild learns the theorem named for Pythagoras, yet he left no writings, and historians doubt many of the discoveries pinned on him. The best-attested thing he taught w…
Python's scikit-learn library offers a versatile toolkit for analyzing complex brain dataResearchers who use neuroimaging data often face the challenge of processing high-dimensional information, such as complex brain activation patterns or resting-state time series. …- Pyxis is a modern celestial compass that once belonged to a legendary ancient ship.Introduced in the 18th century, the constellation Pyxis represents a mariner's compass. While it occupies a small patch of the southern sky, it sits near the stars that once forme…