Negative Quiddity: Quisling

Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (18 July 1887 – 24 October 1945) was a Norwegian military officer and politician, mostly known as nominal head of government of Norway during German occupation.

Quisling first came to international prominence as a close collaborator of Fridtjof Nansen, organizing humanitarian relief during the Russian famine of 1921 in Ukraine. He was posted as a Norwegian diplomat to the Soviet Union, and for some time also managed British diplomatic affairs there. He returned to Norway in 1929, and served as Minister of Defence in the governments of Peder Kolstad (1931–32) and Jens Hundseid (1932–33), representing the Farmers' Party. Although Quisling achieved some popularity after his attacks on the political left, his party failed to win any seats in the Storting and was little more than peripheral in 1940. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he attempted to seize power in the world's first radio-broadcast coup d'état, but failed after the Germans refused to support his government.

From 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, heading the Norwegian state administration jointly with the German civilian administrator Josef Terboven. His pro-Nazi puppet government, known as the Quisling regime, was dominated by ministers from Nasjonal Samling, the party he founded in 1933. The collaborationist government participated in Germany's Final Solution. Quisling was put on trial during the legal purge in Norway after World War II and found guilty of charges including embezzlement, murder and high treason. He was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, on 24 October 1945. The word quisling has since become a synonym for collaborationist, an allusion to the very poor light in which Quisling's actions were seen both at the time and after his death.

                                                                  Vidkun Quisling

Personality

To his supporters, Quisling was regarded as a conscientious administrator of the highest order, knowledgeable and with an eye for detail. Balanced and gentle to a fault, they believed he cared deeply about his people and maintained high moral standards throughout.  To his opponents, Quisling was unstable and undisciplined, abrupt, even threatening. Quite possibly he was both, at ease among friends and under pressure when confronted with his political opponents, and generally shy and retiring with both. During formal dinners he often said nothing at all except for the occasional cascade of dramatic rhetoric. Indeed, he did not react well to pressure and would often let slip over-dramatic sentiments when put on the spot. Normally open to criticism, he was prone to assuming larger groups were conspiratorial.

Post-war interpretations of Quisling's character are similarly mixed. After the war collaborationist behaviour was popularly viewed as a result of mental deficiency, leaving the personality of the clearly more intelligent Quisling an "enigma". He was instead seen as weak, paranoid, intellectually sterile, and power-hungry: ultimately "muddled rather than thoroughly corrupted".

The Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung described Quisling as a mini-Hitler with a CMT (chosenness-myth-trauma) complex, or alternatively, megalo-paranoia, more often diagnosed in modern times as narcissistic personality disorder. He was "well installed in his personality", but unable to gain a following among his own people as the population did not provide a mirror for Quisling's ideology. In short, he was "a dictator and a clown on the wrong stage with the wrong script."  As quoted by Dahl, psychiatrist Professor Gabriel Langfelt stated Quisling's ultimate goals "fitted the classic description of the paranoid megalomaniac more exactly than any other case [he had] ever encountered."

During his time in office, Quisling rose early, often having completed several hours of work before arriving at the office between 9:30 and 10:00. He liked to intervene in virtually all government matters, reading all letters addressed to him or his chancellery personally and marking a surprising number for action.  Quisling was independently minded, made several key decisions on the spot and, unlike his German counterpart, he liked to follow procedure to ensure that government remained "a dignified and civilised" affair throughout.  He took a personal interest in the administration of Fyresdal, where he was born.

He rejected German racial supremacy and instead saw the Norwegian race as the progenitor of northern Europe, tracing his own family tree in his spare time.  Party members did not receive preferential treatment, though Quisling did not himself share in the wartime hardships of his fellow Norwegians. Nevertheless, many gifts went unused and he did not live extravagantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling

"Magnitude" in Astronomy

In astronomy, magnitude is the logarithmic measure of the brightness of an object, measured in a specific wavelength or passband, usually in the visible or near-infrared spectrum. An imprecise but systemic determination of the magnitude of objects was introduced in ancient times by Hipparchus.

Astronomers use two different definitions of magnitude: apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude. The apparent magnitude (m, or vmag for the visible spectrum) is the brightness of an object as it appears in the night sky from Earth, while the absolute magnitude (Mv, V and H) describes the intrinsic brightness of an object as it would appear if it were placed at a certain distance from Earth. This distance is 10 parsecs for stars and 1 astronomical unit for asteroids and planets. The size of an asteroid is typically estimated based on its absolute magnitude.

The brighter an object appears, the lower the value of its magnitude, with the brightest objects reaching negative values. The Sun has an apparent magnitude of −27, the full moon −13, the brightest planet Venus measures −5, and Sirius, the brightest visible star in the night sky is at −1.5. An apparent magnitude can also be assigned to man-made objects in Earth orbit. The brightest satellite flares are ranked at −9, and the International Space Station appears at a magnitude of −6. Since the scale is logarithmic, each step of one magnitude changes the brightness by a factor of about 2.512. A magnitude 4 star is exactly a hundred times brighter than a magnitude 9 star, as the difference of five magnitude steps corresponds to (2.512)⁵ or 100.

Apparent and Absolute Magnitude

Two of the main types of magnitudes distinguished by astronomers are:

• Apparent magnitude, the brightness of an object as it appears in the night sky. For example, Alpha Centauri has higher apparent magnitude (i.e. lower value) than Betelgeuse, because it is much closer to the Earth.
• Absolute magnitude, which measures the luminosity of an object (or reflected light for non-luminous objects like asteroids); it is the object's apparent magnitude as seen from a specific distance. For stars it is 10 parsecs (32.6 light years). Betelgeuse has much higher absolute magnitude than Alpha Centauri, because it is much more luminous.

Usually only apparent magnitude is mentioned since it can be measured directly.

Problems

The human eye is easily fooled, and Hipparchus's scale has had problems. For example, the human eye is more sensitive to yellow/red light than to blue, and photographic film more to blue than to yellow/red, giving different values of visual magnitude and photographic magnitude. Apparent magnitude can also be affected by factors such as dust in the atmosphere or light cloud cover absorbing some of the light.

Furthermore, many people find it counter-intuitive that a high magnitude star is dimmer than a low magnitude star.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(astronomy)

Pi and Quantum Mechanics

Discovery of a Classic Pi Formula
a ‘Cunning Piece of Magic’
Wallis formula buried in quantum mechanics calculation

University of Rochester, November 10, 2015 -- While most people associate the mathematical constant π (pi) with arcs and circles, mathematicians are accustomed to seeing it in a variety of fields. But two University scientists were still surprised to find it lurking in a quantum mechanics formula for the energy states of the hydrogen atom.

“We didn’t just find pi,” said Tamar Friedmann, a visiting assistant professor of mathematics and a research associate of high energy physics, and co-author of a paper published this week in the Journal of Mathematical Physics. “We found the classic seventeenth century Wallis formula for pi, making us the first to derive it from physics, in general, and quantum mechanics, in particular.”

The Wallis formula—developed by British mathematician John Wallis in his book Arithmetica Infinitorum—defines π as the product of an infinite string of ratios made up of integers. For Friedmann, discovering the Wallis formula for π in a quantum mechanics formula for the hydrogen atom’s energy states underscores π’s omnipresence in math and science.

“The value of pi has taken on a mythical status, in part, because it’s impossible to write it down with 100 percent accuracy,” said Friedmann, “It cannot even be accurately expressed as a ratio of integers, and is, instead, best represented as a formula.”

Friedmann did not set out to look for π nor for the Wallis formula. The discovery began in a quantum mechanics course taught by Carl Hagen, a professor of physics at the University of Rochester and one of the six physicists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson. While the quantum calculations developed by Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the early twentieth century give accurate values for the energy states of hydrogen, Hagen wanted his students to use an alternate method—called the variational principle—to approximate the value for the ground state of the hydrogen atom. Like the Wallis formula, the variational principle dates back to the seventeenth century, one of its first appearances being the Principle of Least Time of mathematician Pierre de Fermat, a contemporary of Wallis. Hagen also started thinking about whether it would be possible to apply this method to states other than the ground state. Hagen got Friedmann involved to take advantage of her ability to work in both physics and mathematics.

Although applying the variational principle to calculate the ground state of a hydrogen atom is a relatively straightforward problem, its applicability to an excited state is far from obvious. This is because the variational principle cannot ordinarily be applied if there are lower energy levels. However, Friedmann and Hagen were able to get around that by separating the problem into a series of l problems, each of which focused on the lowest energy level for  a given orbital angular momentum quantum number, l.

They could then calculate the values for the different energy states and compare them with the values obtained by Bohr almost a century ago. This enabled them to determine how the ratio of the Bohr values to the values obtained with the ‘tweaked’ variational principle changed as higher and higher energy levels were taken into account. And they were surprised to see that the ratio yielded—effectively—the Wallis formula for π.

Specifically, the calculation of Friedmann and Hagen resulted in an expression involving special mathematical functions called gamma functions leading to the formula

 which can be reduced to the classic Wallis formula:

“What surprised me is that the formula occurred in such a natural way in the calculations, with no circles involved in determining the energy states,” said Hagen, the co-author of the paper. “And I am glad I didn’t think about this before Tamar arrived in Rochester, because it would have gone nowhere and we would not have made this discovery.”

Mathematician Moshe Machover of King’s College London calls the finding a “cunning piece of magic.”

“This derivation of pi is a surprise of the familiar, much like a magician’s trick,” said Machover. “A child who sees a trick done for the first time may be only surprised. But an adult, who has seen numerous tricks over the years, experiences both surprise and familiarity.”

Addressing the centuries-long gap between the seventeenth century Wallis formula, the twentieth century quantum theory, and the decades that passed from that time to now, Doug Ravenel, a professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, points out that Friedmann and Hagen used long-established concepts of their fields to arrive at their result, so even mathematicians and physicists who lived many decades ago would have been able to appreciate it.

“This is a beautiful connection between pi and quantum mechanics that could have been found 80 years ago, but was not discovered until now,” said Ravenel, congratulating the two authors.

While it took nearly a century to discover this classical-quantum connection, getting it published took far less time; the Journal of Mathematical Physics accepted the paper in less than 24 hours.

http://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/discovery-of-classic-pi-formula-a-cunning-piece-of-magic-128002/

Complexity Theory: Breakthrough

                                               These two networks are identical!

 

Adrian Cho of Science magazine has an interesting article about these different diagrams that are, in fact, identical with respect to which items are connected with which other items.  Laslo Babai, a computer scientist and mathematician from the University of Chicago, has come up with a computer program that determines whether or not two different-looking networks like those above really are the same.

This is a  very important advance in “complexity theory,”  which is the study of what is easy – or hard – to solve on a computer.

Babai is presenting his work this month and other scientists will be checking on it for accuracy.

 

A full story on this is available at this link:

http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2015/11/mathematician-claims-breakthrough-complexity-theory

New Way to Find DNA Damage

Utah Chemists Look for Precursors to Disease Mutations

November 6, 2015 -- University of Utah chemists devised a new way to detect chemical damage to DNA that sometimes leads to genetic mutations responsible for many diseases, including various cancers and neurological disorders.

“We are one step closer to understanding the underlying chemistry that leads to genetic diseases,” says Cynthia Burrows, distinguished professor and chair of chemistry at the university and senior author of a new study published Nov. 6 in the online journal Nature Communications. “We have a way of marking and copying DNA damage sites so that we can preserve the information of where and what the damage was.”

Jan Riedl, a University of Utah postdoctoral fellow and the study’s first author, says 99 percent of DNA lesions – damage to the chemical bases known as A, C, G and T that help form the DNA double helix – are repaired naturally. The rest can lead to genetic mutations, which are errors in the sequence of bases and can cause disease. The new method can “identify and detect the position of lesions that lead to diseases,” he says.

Burrows says: “We are trying to look for the chemical changes in the base that can lead the cell to make a mistake, a mutation. One of the powerful things about our method is we can read more than a single damaged site [and up to dozens] on the same strand of DNA.”

The chemists say their new method will let researchers study chemical details of DNA lesions or damage. Such lesions, if not repaired naturally, accumulate over time and can lead to mutations responsible for many age-related diseases, including colon, breast, liver, lung and melanoma skin cancers; clogged arteries; and neurological ailments such as Huntington’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“A method capable of identifying the chemical identity and location in which lesions appear is crucial for determining the molecular etiology [cause] of these diseases,” Burrows and colleague write in their study.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Burrows and Riedl conducted the study with University of Utah chemists Aaron Fleming, a research assistant professor, and Yun Ding, a postdoctoral researcher.

Method detects DNA damage that can lead to disease

DNA is a molecule, shaped like a double-stranded helix that contains the genetic instructions that living organisms use to develop, function and reproduce. Each strand is made of numerous copies of four chemical bases – A, C, G and T – linked by a backbone of sugar and phosphate. When two strands are connected in a double helix, only two kinds of base pairs can form C-G (or G-C) and A-T (or T-A).

The new method for finding DNA lesions combines other, existing techniques.

First, the researchers find the damage and cut it out of the DNA the same way a cell does naturally, using what is called “base excision repair,” the discovery of which won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year for Tomas Lindahl, a scientist in England.

Second, an “unnatural base pair” is inserted at the snipped-out DNA damage site to label it. Instead of natural base pairs C-G and A-T, the Utah chemists used a so-called third or unnatural base pair invented by chemists at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Burrows says her study demonstrates the first practical use of that invention.

This graphic shows a new method, developed at the University of Utah, for identifying DNA lesions, or sights of damage on DNA strands that can lead to disease-causing mutations.  First the damage is cut-out and replaced by so-called unnatural base pairs so chemists can amplify, or make millions of copies, of the damaged DNA.  Then they label the unnatural base with a chemical called 18-crown 6-ether, which makes it easier to detect the site of DNA damage by passing the strand of DNA through molecule-size nanopore.

Third, the DNA with the damage site labeled by an unnatural third base pair is then amplified or copied millions of times using a well-known existing method called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. Burrows says the new study’s key innovation was to use base excision repair to snip out the damage and then to insert the unnatural base pair at the damage site, making it possible to make millions of copies of the DNA – a process that normally would be prevented by the damage.

Fourth, another chemical label, named 18-crown-6 ether, is affixed to the unnatural base pair on all the DNA strands, which are then read or sequenced using a kind of nanopore sequencing developed a few years ago by Burrows and Utah chemist Henry White. Such sequencing involves determining the order and location of bases on a DNA strand – including damage sites labeled by unnatural bases – by passing the strand through a molecule-size pore or nanopore.

People are born with their genome or genetic blueprint of 3 billion base pairs, “and then stuff happens,” Burrows says. “There’s damage from oxidative stress due to inflammation and infection, too much metabolism, or environmental chemicals.”

The new method seeks “molecular details that define how our genome responds to what we eat and the air we breathe, and ends up being healthy or not,” she says.

DNA lesions happen more than 10,000 times a day in a single human cell. A lesion can be a missing base, a base that has changed chemically or a break in the DNA backbone. That many lesions may seem like a lot, but with 3 billion base pairs in the genome of a single cell, the damage only affects about one of every 300,000 base pairs.

 Details of the study

The chemists tested their method on a gene named KRAS that, when mutated, can cause lung or breast cancer.

Burrows says most DNA sequencing methods reveal mutations because the methods read the bases A, C, G and T. When sequencing reveals one of those bases out of place, that is a mutation. “However, what you don’t know is what chemistry – what modification – caused that mutation,” she says,

But scientists can’t find a single strand of DNA in a solution in a reasonable time. They need to make millions to billions of copies of the DNA so they can sequence it and locate the gap where the damage was. But the damage itself is “a train wreck” that either prevents making copies of the DNA or makes copies with errors, Burrows says.

So once the damaged base has been excised to create a gap, the chemists insert the third or unnatural base pair at then damage site as a way to label it while at the same time allowing millions of copies of the labeled DNA to be made.

Burrows says the key innovation in the new method is using base excision repair and unnatural base pairs “to copy the DNA and retain the information about damage that was in the original molecule.”

The chemists next use PCR amplification to make millions of copies of the DNA by heating it until strands in the double helix separate. The strands are put in a solution with lots of A, C, G and T nucleotides – the bases attached to pieces of DNA backbone. A polymerase enzyme is attached to the end of each strand of DNA, and then moves along the strand grabbing T, G, C and A nucleotides to make a second strand. Each DNA strand quickly becomes two. The number of strands reaches the millions in hours.

“We need that many because, if we just have one molecule, we can’t find it,” Burrows says. “It’s like saying, ‘There’s one fish in that pond; try to catch it.’ But if there are a bunch of identical fish, you can catch any one of them and still have dinner.”

Once the chemists have millions of DNA strands with the damage labeled by an unnatural base pair, they then use nanopore sequencing to locate the damage. Burrows says to imagine the DNA strand is a long piece of yarn with a number of knots tied in it to represent labeled DNA lesions. Grab one end of the yarn with one hand, and pull it through a couple of fingers on the other hand. The fingers represent the nanopore that detects the knots or damage as they pass between the fingers.

To do nanopore sequencing, the DNA’s damage sites, which are labeled with unnatural bases, are labeled again with a chemical named 18-crown-6 ether that basically makes the “knots” on the DNA “yarn” bigger and easier to find as the DNA strand moves through a pore-shaped protein bathed in electrically charged fluid. Changes in electric current allow chemists detect the bases A, C, G and T and the labeled unnatural bases.

Finding the labeled unnatural bases identifies the DNA damage site to within 10 base pairs. Burrows says the nanopore sequencing method needs improvement or replacement by next-generation sequencing to actually pinpoint the damage sites.

 

http://unews.utah.edu/new-way-to-find-dna-damage/

Positive Quiddity: Harry Warren

Harry Warren (December 24, 1893 – September 22, 1981) was an American composer and lyricist. Warren was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". He wrote the music for the first blockbuster film musical, 42nd Street, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, with whom he would collaborate on many musical films.

Over a career spanning four decades, Warren wrote more than 800 songs. Other well-known Warren hits included "I Only Have Eyes for You", "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby", "Jeepers Creepers", "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "That's Amore", "The More I See You", "At Last" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (the last of which was the first gold record in history). Warren was one of America's most prolific film composers,and his songs have been featured in over 300 films.

Warren wrote over 800 songs between 1918 and 1981, publishing over 500 of them  They were written mainly for 56 feature films or were used in other films that used Warren's newly written or existing songs.^[1] His songs eventually appeared in over 300 films and 112 of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.  42 of his songs were on the top ten list of the radio program "Your Hit Parade", a measure of a song's popularity.  21 of these reached #1 on Your Hit Parade. "You'll Never Know" appeared 24 times.  His song "I Only Have Eyes for You" is listed in the list of the 25 most-performed songs of the 20th Century, as compiled by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).  Warren was the director of ASCAP from 1929 to 1932.

He collaborated on some of his most famous songs with lyricists Al Dubin, Billy Rose, Mack Gordon, Leo Robin, Ira Gershwin and Johnny Mercer. In 1942 the Gordon-Warren song "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", as performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, became the first gold record in history. It was No.1 for 9 weeks on the Billboard pop singles chart in 1941–1942, selling 1.2 million copies.  Among his biggest hits were "There Will Never Be Another You", "I Only Have Eyes for You", "Forty-Second Street", "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "Lullaby of Broadway", "Serenade In Blue", "At Last", "Jeepers Creepers", "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me", "That's Amore", and "Young and Healthy".^[

Warren's first hit song was "Rose of the Rio Grande" (1922), with lyrics by Edgar Leslie.  He wrote a succession of hit songs in the 1920s, including "I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)" and "Seminola" in 1925, "Where Do You Work-a John?" and "In My Gondola" in 1926 and "Nagasaki" in 1928. In 1930, he composed the music for the song "Cheerful Little Earful" for the Billy Rose Broadway revue, Sweet and Low, and composed the music, with lyrics by Mort Dixon and Joe Young, for the Ed Wynn Broadway revue The Laugh Parade in 1931.

He started working for Warner Brothers

 in 1932, paired with Dubin to write the score for the first blockbuster film musical, 42nd Street, and continued to work there for six years, writing the scores for 32 more musicals.  He worked for 20th Century Fox starting in 1940, writing with Mack Gordon.  He moved to MGM starting in 1944, writing for musical films such as The Harvey Girls and The Barkleys of Broadway, many starring Fred Astaire. He later worked for Paramount, starting in the early 1950s, writing for the Bing Crosby movie Just for You and the Martin and Lewis movie The Caddy, the latter containing the hit song "That's Amore". He continued to write songs for several more Jerry Lewis comedies.^[1]

Warren is particularly remembered for writing scores for the films of Busby Berkeley; they worked together on 18 films. His "uptempo songs are as memorable as Berkeley's choreography, as [sic] for the same reason: they capture, in a few snazzy notes, the vigorous frivolity of the Jazz Age."

Warren won the Academy Award for Best Song three times, collaborating with three different lyricists: "Lullaby of Broadway" with Al Dubin in 1935, "You'll Never Know" with Mack Gordon in 1943, and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" with Johnny Mercer in 1946. He was nominated for eleven Oscars.

According to Wilfrid Sheed, quoted in Time Magazine, "By silent consensus, the king of this army of unknown soldiers, the Hollywood incognitos, was Harry Warren, who had more songs on the Hit Parade than Berlin himself and who would win the contest hands down if enough people have heard of him."  William Zinsser noted, "The familiarity of Harry Warren's songs is matched by the anonymity of the man... he is the invisible man, his career a prime example of the oblivion that cloaked so many writers who cranked out good songs for bad movies."

In 1980, producer David Merrick and director Gower Champion adapted the 1933 film 42nd Street into a Broadway musical that won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1981, ran for 3,486 performances and has had several major revivals.  The score incorporated songs by Warren and Dubin from various movie musicals including 42nd Street, Dames, Go Into Your Dance, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Gold Diggers of 1935.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Warren

Popcorn, a versatile snack

Popcorn, also known as popping corn, is a type of corn (maize, Zea mays var. everta) that expands from the kernel and puffs up when heated. Popcorn is able to pop because, like amaranth grain, sorghum, quinoa, and millet, its kernels have a hard moisture-sealed hull and a dense starchy interior. When heated, pressure builds within the kernel, and a small explosion (or "pop") is the end result. Some strains of corn are now cultivated specifically as popping corns.

There are various techniques for popping corn. Along with prepackaged popcorn, which is generally intended to be prepared in a microwave oven, there are small home appliances for popping corn. These methods require the use of minimally processed popping corn.

A larger-scale, commercial popcorn machine was invented by Charles Cretors in the late 19th century.

Unpopped popcorn is considered nonperishable and will last indefinitely if stored in ideal conditions.

Depending on how it is prepared and cooked, some consider popcorn to be a health food, while others caution against it for a variety of reasons. Popcorn can also have non-food applications, ranging from holiday decorations to packaging materials.

History

Corn was first domesticated in Mexico 9,000 years ago from a wild grass.

During the Great Depression, popcorn was fairly inexpensive at 5–10 cents a bag and became popular. Thus, while other businesses failed, the popcorn business thrived and became a source of income for many struggling farmers, including the Reddenbacher family, namesake of the famous popcorn brand. During World War II, sugar rations diminished candy production, and Americans compensated by eating three times as much popcorn as they had before.

At least six localities (all in the Midwestern United States) claim to be the "Popcorn Capital of the World;": Ridgway, Illinois; Valparaiso, Indiana; Van Buren, Indiana; Schaller, Iowa; Marion, Ohio; and North Loup, Nebraska. According to the USDA, corn used for popcorn production is specifically planted for this purpose; most is grown in Nebraska and Indiana, with increasing area in Texas.

As the result of an elementary school project, popcorn became the official state snack food of Illinois.

January 19 is National Popcorn Day in the United States.

Jargon for Differences in Popcorn

In popcorn jargon, a popped kernel of corn is known as a "flake." Two shapes of flakes are commercially important. "Butterfly" or "snowflake" flakes are irregular in shape and have a number of protruding "wings". "Mushroom" flakes are largely ball-shaped, with few wings. Butterfly flakes are regarded as having better mouthfeel, with greater tenderness and less noticeable hulls. Mushroom flakes are less fragile than butterfly flakes and are therefore often used for packaged popcorn or confectionery, such as caramel corn. The kernels from a single cob of popcorn may form both butterfly and mushroom flakes; hybrids that produce 100% butterfly flakes or 100% mushroom flakes exist, the latter developed only as recently as 1998. Growing conditions and popping environment can also affect the butterfly-to-mushroom ratio.

                                                  Mushroom and Butterfly popcorn  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mushroom_and_butterfly_popcorn.jpg#/media/File:Mushroom_and_butterfly_popcorn.jpg

Consumption in the USA

Popcorn balls (popped kernels stuck together with a sugary "glue") were hugely popular around the turn of the 20th century, but their popularity has since waned. Popcorn balls are still served in some places as a traditional Halloween treat. Cracker Jack is a popular, commercially produced candy that consists of peanuts mixed in with caramel-covered popcorn. Kettle corn is a variation of normal popcorn, cooked with white sugar and salt, traditionally in a large copper kettle. Once reserved for specialty shops and county fairs, kettle corn has recently become popular, especially in the microwave popcorn market. The popcorn maker is a relatively new home appliance, and its popularity is increasing because it offers the opportunity to add flavours of the consumer's own choice and to choose healthy-eating popcorn styles.

Some popular brands of popcorn in the United States are Orville Redenbacher's, Act II, Jiffy Pop (all three of which are brands of the ConAgra Foods conglomerate), Pop Secret, Candy Land Gourmet, Jolly Time, Aussie Crunch, Newman's Own, Dale and Thomas and Pop Weaver.

The world's largest popcorn ball was unveiled in October 2006 in Lake Forest, Illinois. It weighed 3,415 pounds (1,549 kg), measured 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter, and had a circumference of 24.6 ft (7.5 m).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn