All articles starting with S
44,216 articles
Soft underwater robot
A soft underwater robot is an aquatic robot built from compliant materials like silicone, inspired by octopuses and fish for gentle reef observation and sampling.
Soft X-ray
A soft X-ray is a lower-energy, longer-wavelength X-ray, spanning the water window near 2.3 to 4.4 nm, used to image intact cells and probe materials.
Soft X-ray laser
A soft X-ray laser is a laser emitting coherent radiation in the soft X-ray region, produced in highly ionized plasmas, either as compact tabletop systems or large free-electron facilities.
Soft X-ray magnetic laminography
Soft X-ray magnetic laminography is a 3D imaging technique that reconstructs magnetization in thin magnetic samples from XMCD projections, first demonstrated at the Swiss Light Source in 2020.
Soft X-ray scattering
Soft X-ray scattering is an X-ray technique using photons around 200 to 2000 eV to probe electronic structure, magnetism, and nanoscale order, with element- and valence-specific contrast.
Soft x-ray tomography
Soft x-ray tomography is an imaging method that reconstructs a 3D map of a specimen's x-ray absorption, used mainly for quantitative imaging of whole, unstained cryo-preserved cells.
Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier
Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier, an Irish farm terrier breed with a soft, silky wheaten single coat; recognized by the Irish KC in 1937 and AKC in 1973; dogs 18–19 inches, 35–40 pounds; UK median survival 13.7 years; prone to familial PLE/PLN.
Soft-collinear effective theory
Soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) is an effective field theory of quantum chromodynamics describing processes with energetic jets and soft radiation, expanding amplitudes in the small ratio Λ/Q.
Soft-core processor implementation on FPGAs
A soft-core processor is a CPU described in a hardware description language and synthesized onto an FPGA's generic logic fabric, offering portability and lower cost than fixed silicon cores.
Soft-decision decoding
Soft-decision decoding is a family of error-correction methods that pass each received symbol's reliability to the decoder, gaining roughly 1.5 to 2.3 dB over hard decisions.
Soft-decision FEC
Soft-decision FEC (SD-FEC) is forward error correction that decodes using multi-level, confidence-bearing receiver output, typically using LDPC or turbo product codes for about 3 dB more gain than hard-decision codes.
Soft-input soft-output
Soft-input soft-output (SISO) is a decoder design that passes reliability information, usually log-likelihood ratios, between receiver components so iterative schemes like turbo decoding can converge, using algorithms such as the BCJR of 1974.
Soft-output MIMO detection
Soft-output MIMO detection is a receiver component that separates spatially multiplexed MIMO data streams and computes a log-likelihood ratio for each coded bit for the channel decoder.
Soft-output Viterbi algorithm
The soft-output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) is a variant of the Viterbi algorithm that also gives a reliability value for each decoded symbol, introduced by Hagenauer and Hoeher in 1989.
Soft-point bullet
Soft-point bullet: jacketed rifle or pistol projectile with exposed lead tip that mushrooms on impact; variants RSP, PSP, JSP; Hague 1899, hunting use.
Soft-shell crab
Soft-shell crab is a crab eaten just after molting, before its new shell hardens; not a species. Centered on Chesapeake Bay blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) and Asian farmed Scylla mud crabs, produced in shedding floats and tanks.
Softail
Softail is a family of Harley-Davidson cruiser motorcycles with a hidden rear shock that preserves the vintage hard tail look, introduced in 1984 and still the basis of the company's Cruiser lineup.
Softball
Softball: bat-and-ball sport invented 1887 at Chicago's Farragut Boat Club by George Hancock; renamed softball in 1926; seven-inning WBSC rules; Olympic women's event since 1996.
Softball at the 2020 Summer Olympics
Softball at the 2020 Summer Olympics: women's tournament, 21-27 July 2021, Yokohama and Fukushima. Japan beat USA 2-0 for a second straight gold; Canada took bronze; six teams competed.
Softball at the 2026 Asian Games
Softball at the 2026 Asian Games: women's softball at the 20th Asian Games in Anjo, Aichi, Japan, 26 September to 3 October 2026. Eight teams; Japan beat China 7-0 for gold, its seventh straight title; Chinese Taipei took bronze.
Softball at the 2028 Summer Olympics
Softball at the 2028 Summer Olympics (LA28): six-team women's round-robin tournament at OKC Softball Park (Devon Park), Oklahoma City, July 23–29, 2028, returning after Tokyo 2020; US leads all-time medals.
Softball at the Summer Olympics
Olympic women's fast-pitch softball tournament, also called softball at the Games; debuted Atlanta 1996, played 1996-2008 and Tokyo 2020, returns at LA 2028 in Oklahoma City; US leads with 3 golds.
SoftBank AI investments
SoftBank's AI investments are the Japanese technology group's debt-financed funding of frontier AI, centered on $64.6 billion committed to OpenAI for about 13% ownership and the Stargate data-center project.
SoftBank Group
SoftBank Group Corp., known in Japanese as Sofutobanku Kabushiki-gaisha, is a Japanese investment holding company that owns Arm and SoftBank Corp. and holds major stakes in OpenAI and ByteDance.
SoftBank Mobile
SoftBank Mobile (ソフトバンクモバイル株式会社) was a Japanese mobile carrier, formed from J-PHONE and Vodafone K.K. and acquired by SoftBank in 2006, renamed SoftBank Corp. in 2015.
SoftBank Robotics
SoftBank Robotics Group Corp. is the Tokyo-headquartered robotics business of Japan's SoftBank Group, known for the humanoid robot Pepper, launched in 2014, and the Whiz cleaning robot.
Softcore pornography
Softcore pornography: erotic film, video, or photography showing nudity and simulated sexual situations without explicit depiction of genitalia or intercourse; sits between erotica and hardcore, spanning sexploitation cinema, Cinemax serials, and Japan's pink film.
SoftHand
The Pisa/IIT SoftHand is an anthropomorphic robotic hand with 19 degrees of freedom driven by a single motor, developed at the University of Pisa and the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia.
SoftKey
SoftKey, also known as SoftKey International, was a Canadian consumer software company founded by Kevin O'Leary in Toronto in 1986, a low-price consolidator of educational software.
Softmax function
The softmax function, also known as the normalized exponential, converts a vector of scores into probabilities that sum to 1; it is the standard output layer of multi-class neural classifiers.