Project MKUltra, or MK-Ultra, was a covert, illegal human research program into behavioral modification run by the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967 and finally halted in 1973. It controversially used unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects. MKUltra involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate people’s individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.

The research was undertaken at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA would operate through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions would be aware of the CIA’s involvement. MKUltra was allocated 6 percent of total CIA funds.

Project MKUltra on WIkipedia.

There have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects.

The experiments include: the deliberate infection of people with deadly or debilitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human radiation experiments, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation/torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Many of these tests were performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of “medical treatment”. In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities or prisoners.

Funding for many of the experiments was provided by United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency, United States military and federal or military corporations. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed.

Unethical human experimentation in the United States on Wikipedia.

Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. The theory enables mathematical analysis of several related processes, including arriving at the (back of the) queue, waiting in the queue (essentially a storage process), and being served at the front of the queue. The theory permits the derivation and calculation of several performance measures including the average waiting time in the queue or the system, the expected number waiting or receiving service, and the probability of encountering the system in certain states, such as empty, full, having an available server or having to wait a certain time to be served.

Queueing theory has applications in diverse fields, including telecommunications, traffic engineering, computing and the design of factories, shops, offices and hospitals.

Queueing theory on Wikipedia.

In filmmaking, the 180° rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called crossing the line or jumping the line.

180 degree rule on Wikipedia.

The Gesundheit Radio, first seen in 1972, was engineered to sneeze, that is blow out dust, once every six months in order to keep things running clean and cool. Way back in 1972, this Gesundheit Radio was created by an experimental research group at Texas Instruments.

Despite the name, the Gesundheit Radio was not made in Germany. It was designed by the Attenborough Design Group – active in the 1970s and 1980s – an experimental section within Texas Instruments. Their first product was the 1972 Gesundheit Radio. Twice a year, the case would lean back, opening up its mechanical maw and use internal bellows to blow out the accumulated dust with the intent of protect early microprocessors from dust. This would ensure a longer life for the device, a feature at odds with today’s gadgets which are engineered to fail and be replaced in a relatively short time.

Users had the manual option of overriding the bi-annual sneeze, with a SNZ button being added for those days when you really don’t have time to give the feather duster a work-out.

Gesundheit radio on Wikipedia.

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest construction and engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 5th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. Its headquarters are in the Financial District of San Francisco. As of 2010, Bechtel had $30.8 billion in revenue and employed 49,000 workers on projects in nearly 50 countries.
Bechtel participated in the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. It has also had involvement in a number of other high profile construction engineering projects: numerous power projects such as refineries and nuclear power plants; transportation projects including the Channel Tunnel, the BART system, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam (the largest Airport in the world by land area), Hong Kong International Airport and the Big Dig; and other projects such as the Kingdom Centre and Tower in Saudi Arabia, Jubail Industrial City, the rebuilding of the civil infrastructure of Iraq funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the hauling and installing of more than 35,000 trailers and mobile homes for Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.

The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1945. Bechtel’s size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a constant subject of scrutiny for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel owns and operates power plants, oil refineries, water systems, and airports in several countries including the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

Bechtel Corporation on Wikipedia.