The Plum Group, Inc. (DBA Plum Voice) is a company. Plum is headquartered in New York City with offices in Boston and Denver. == History == Plum Voice, founded in 2000 as The Plum Group, Inc., was incorporated to create technologies for personalized audio communication. By 2001, Plum had commercialized the open-standard Plum VoiceXML IVR platform which facilitated the creation of dynamic telecom applications. 2001 - Commercial launch of Plum VoiceXML IVR platform for customer-premises deployment 2002 - Launch of Plum Voice Hosting Centers for 24x7x365 managed IVR hosting 2004 - Plum Voice application suite receives a "Product of the Year" award from Customer Interactions magazine 2008 - Plum Survey builder launched, a do-it-yourself IVR survey tool. 2010 - Plum launched QuickFuse, a web-based rapid development platform used to create voice applications. 2013 - Plum launched VoiceTrends, an analytics and reporting toolkit designed specifically for voice applications. Plum achieves PCI-DSS Level 1. 2015 - Plum launched Plum Insight, a multi-channel (voice, web, mobile) survey platform. Plum achieves HIPAA compliance. 2016 - Plum launched a new version of QuickFuse called Fuse+. 2020 - Plum sunsets QuickFuse, rebrands Fuse+ as Plum Fuse.
Desktop Window Manager
Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE in builds of pre-reset Windows Longhorn) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface of Windows. It was originally created to enable portions of the new "Windows Aero" user experience, which allowed for effects such as transparency, 3D window switching and more. It is also included with Windows Server 2008, but requires the "Desktop Experience" feature and compatible graphics drivers to be installed. == Architecture == The Desktop Window Manager is a compositing window manager, meaning that each program has a buffer that it writes data to; DWM then composites each program's buffer into a final image. By comparison, the stacking window manager in Windows XP and earlier (and also Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Windows Aero disabled) comprises a single display buffer to which all programs write. DWM works in different ways depending on the operating system (Windows 7 or Windows Vista) and on the version of the graphics drivers it uses (WDDM 1.0 or 1.1). Under Windows 7 and with WDDM 1.1 drivers, DWM only writes the program's buffer to the video RAM, even if it is a graphics device interface (GDI) program. This is because Windows 7 supports (limited) hardware acceleration for GDI and in doing so does not need to keep a copy of the buffer in system RAM so that the CPU can write to it. Because the compositor has access to the graphics of all applications, it easily allows visual effects that string together visuals from multiple applications, such as transparency. DWM uses DirectX to perform the function of compositing and rendering in the GPU, freeing the CPU of the task of managing the rendering from the off-screen buffers to the display. However, it does not affect applications painting to the off-screen buffers – depending on the technologies used for that, this might still be CPU-bound. DWM-agnostic rendering techniques like GDI are redirected to the buffers by rendering the user interface (UI) as bitmaps. DWM-aware rendering technologies like WPF directly make the internal data structures available in a DWM-compatible format. The window contents in the buffers are then converted to DirectX textures. The desktop itself is a full-screen Direct3D surface, with windows being represented as a mesh consisting of two adjacent (and mutually inverted) triangles, which are transformed to represent a 2D rectangle. The texture, representing the UI chrome, is then mapped onto these rectangles. Window transitions are implemented as transformations of the meshes, using shader programs. With Windows Vista, the transitions are limited to the set of built-in shaders that implement the transformations. Greg Schechter, a developer at Microsoft has suggested that this might be opened up for developers and users to plug in their own effects in a future release. DWM only maps the primary desktop object as a 3D surface; other desktop objects, including virtual desktops as well as the secure desktop used by User Account Control are not. Because all applications render to an off-screen buffer, they can be read off the buffer embedded in other applications as well. Since the off-screen buffer is constantly updated by the application, the embedded rendering will be a dynamic representation of the application window and not a static rendering. This is how the live thumbnail previews and Windows Flip work in Windows Vista and Windows 7. DWM exposes a public API that allows applications to access these thumbnail representations. The size of the thumbnail is not fixed; applications can request the thumbnails at any size - smaller than the original window, at the same size or even larger - and DWM will scale them properly before returning. Aero Flip does not use the public thumbnail APIs as they do not allow for directly accessing the Direct3D textures. Instead, Aero Flip is implemented directly in the DWM engine. The Desktop Window Manager uses Media Integration Layer (MIL), the unmanaged compositor which it shares with Windows Presentation Foundation, to represent the windows as composition nodes in a composition tree. The composition tree represents the desktop and all the windows hosted in it, which are then rendered by MIL from the back of the scene to the front. Since all the windows contribute to the final image, the color of a resultant pixel can be decided by more than one window. This is used to implement effects such as per-pixel transparency. DWM allows custom shaders to be invoked to control how pixels from multiple applications are used to create the displayed pixel. The DWM includes built-in Pixel Shader 2.0 programs which compute the color of a pixel in a window by averaging the color of the pixel as determined by the window behind it and its neighboring pixels. These shaders are used by DWM to achieve the blur effect in the window borders of windows managed by DWM, and optionally for the areas where it is requested by the application. Since MIL provides a retained mode graphics system by caching the composition trees, the job of repainting and refreshing the screen when windows are moved is handled by DWM and MIL, freeing the application of the responsibility. The background data is already in the composition tree and the off-screen buffers and is directly used to render the background. In pre-Vista Windows OSs, background applications had to be requested to re-render themselves by sending them the WM_PAINT message. DWM uses double-buffered graphics to prevent flickering and tearing when moving windows. The compositing engine uses optimizations such as culling to improve performance, as well as not redrawing areas that have not changed. Because the compositor is multi-monitor aware, DWM natively supports this too. During full-screen applications, such as games, DWM does not perform window compositing and therefore performance will not appreciably decrease. On Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, DWM is used at all times and cannot be disabled, due to the new "start screen experience" implemented. Since the DWM process is usually required to run at all times on Windows 8, users experiencing an issue with the process are seeing memory usage decrease after a system reboot. This is often the first step in a long list of troubleshooting tasks that can help. It is possible to prevent DWM from restarting temporarily in Windows 8, which causes the desktop to turn black, the taskbar grey, and break the start screen/modern apps, but desktop apps will continue to function and appear just like Windows 7 and Vista's Basic theme, based on the single-buffer renderer used by XP. They also use Windows 8's centered title bar, visible within Windows PreInstallation Environment. Starting up Windows without DWM will not work because the default lock screen requires DWM unlike the fallback lockscreen that appears as a command line interface program when Windows.UI.Logon.dll isn't present on Windows versions such as 1507 and later, so it can only be done on the fly, and does not have any practical purposes. Starting with Windows 10, disabling DWM in such a way will cause the entire compositing engine to break, even traditional desktop apps, due to Universal App implementations in the taskbar and new start menu. Windows can still be partially usable without the presence of DWM but requires Sihost.exe to not be present due to it relying on DWM. Most of the applications in Windows 11 require DWM to render UI elements and transparency, Windows 11's new task manager requires dwm to render menus unlike the fallback -d version. Unlike its predecessors, Windows 8 supports basic display adapters through Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP), which uses software rendering and the CPU to render the interface rather than the graphics card. This allows DWM to function without compatible drivers, but not at the same level of performance as with a normal graphics card. DWM on Windows 8 also adds support for stereoscopic 3D. == Redirection == For rendering techniques that are not DWM-aware, output must be redirected to the DWM buffers. With Windows, either GDI or DirectX can be used for rendering. To make these two work with DWM, redirection techniques for both are provided. With GDI, which is the most used UI rendering technique in Microsoft Windows, each application window is notified when it or a part of it comes in view and it is the job of the application to render itself. Without DWM, the rendering rasterizes the UI in a buffer in video memory, from where it is rendered to the screen. Under DWM, GDI calls are redirected to use the Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll), a software renderer. A buffer equal to the size of the window is allocated in system memory and CDD.DLL outputs to this buffer rather than the video memory. Another buffer is allocated in the video memory to represent t
Outline of telecommunication
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to telecommunication: Telecommunication – the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. In modern times, this process almost always involves the use of electromagnetic waves by transmitters and receivers, but in earlier years it also involved the use of drums and visual signals such as smoke, fire, beacons, semaphore lines and other optical communications. == Modes of telecommunication == E-mail Fax Instant messaging Radio Satellite SMS Telegraphy Telephony Television Television broadcasting mobile telephony Videoconferencing VoIP Voicemail == Types of telecommunication networks == Telecommunications network Computer networks ARPANET Ethernet Internet Wireless networks Public switched telephone networks (PSTN) Packet switched networks Radio network Broadband Wireless Broadband == Aspects of telecommunication transmission == Telecommunication Analog Digital Functional profile Optics === Telecommunication technology === Modulation Amplitude modulation Frequency modulation Quadrature amplitude modulation Nyquist rate Nyquist ISI criterion Pulse shaping Intersymbol interference === Communications media types === Physical media for Telecommunication Twisted pair Coaxial cable Optical fiber Telecommunication through Free Space Broadcast radio frequency including television and radio Line-of-sight Communications satellite Terrestrial Microwave Wireless LAN === Relationship between media and transmitters === Physical access to media Simplex Duplex (telecommunications) Logical relationships Return channel Two-way alternating Two-way simultaneous === Multiple access to media === Multiplexing Analog Frequency division multiplexing Space division multiplexing Digital Time-division multiplexing Statistical multiplexing and Packet switching Media Access Control Contention Token-based Centralized token control Distributed token control == History of telecommunication == History of telecommunication History of telegraphy History of the telephone Invention of the telephone Timeline of the telephone History of radio History of television History of videophones History of mobile phones History of computing hardware History of the Internet == Major telecommunications equipment manufacturers == Alcatel-Lucent – French global telecommunications equipment company Aricent – Former company AT&T – American telecommunications company Avaya – American technology company Ciena – American telecommunications company Cisco Systems – American multinational technology companyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Ericsson – Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company Fujitsu – Japanese multinational technology company HCL Technologies – Indian multinational technology companyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Huawei – Chinese multinational technology company NEC – Japanese technology corporation Nokia – Multinational data networking and telecommunications equipment company ShoreTel – US telecommunications company Verizon – American telecommunications company ZTE – Chinese telecommunications company == Major telecommunications service providers == List of mobile network operators List of telephone operating companies == Telecommunication organizations == Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions Telecommunications Industry Association == Telecommunication publications == Magazines Billing and OSS World Cabling Installation & Maintenance Call Center Communications News Communications System Design Lightwave Mobile Radio Technology (MRT) New Telephony Phone+ RCR Wireless News Telecom Asia Telecommunications Magazine Telephony WhatSatphone Magazine Wireless Systems Design Wireless Week Xchange == Persons influential in telecommunication == Edwin Howard Armstrong – American radio-frequency engineer and inventor (1890–1954) John Logie Baird – Scottish inventor (1888–1946) Paul Baran – American-Jewish engineer (1926–2011) Alexander Graham Bell – Inventor of the telephone (1847–1922) Tim Berners-Lee – English computer scientist (born 1955) Jagadish Chandra Bose – Physicist, biologist and botanist (1857–1937) Vint Cerf – American computer scientist and Internet pioneer (born 1943) Claude Chappe – Late 18th-century French inventor Donald Davies – British computer scientist (1924–2000) Louis Pouzin – French computer scientist and Internet pioneer (born 1931) Lee de Forest – American inventor (1873–1961) Philo Farnsworth – American inventor (1906–1971) Reginald Fessenden – Canadian-American electrical engineer and inventor (1866–1932) Elisha Gray – American electrical engineer (1835–1901) Innocenzo Manzetti – Italian inventor (1826–1877) Guglielmo Marconi – Italian radio-frequency engineer and inventor (1874–1937) Antonio Meucci – Italian inventor (1808–1889) Alexander Stepanovich Popov – Russian physicist (1859–1906)Pages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Johann Philipp Reis – German scientist and inventor Almon Brown Strowger – American inventor of the telephone exchange (1839–1902) Nikola Tesla – Serbian-American engineer and inventor (1856–1943) Camille Tissot – French physicist (1868–1917) Alfred Vail – 19th-century American machinist and inventor Charles Wheatstone – English physicist and inventor (1802–1875) Vladimir K. Zworykin – Russian-American engineer (1888–1982)
Infone
Infone was a service launched by Metro One Telecommunications in 2003. The service was discontinued effective December 14, 2005. == How it worked == Infone included directory assistance and other services via a toll-free phone number. A user could call 888-411-1111 to request directory assistance, directions, traffic information, movie times, call completion, dinner reservation assistance and other services. Infone provided a number of innovative 411 'concierge'-like services, including movie listings from a live operator, and offered a feature where they could provide information from a linked Microsoft Outlook calendar when set up in advance. For a period of time they advertised heavily on U.S. television, featuring ads with then Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, emphasizing their use of all U.S. based operators. The price offered was $0.89 per call up to 15 minutes (for use when the operator connects you to the requested number, as well as for additional information requests afterwards), with $0.05 for each additional minute, making Infone also a competitively priced long-distance service. New users received 5–10 free calls. Infone identified a registered user (along with billing information; the service was only payable by credit card) by caller ID (numbers were registered on signing up) and by an advanced voiceprint recognition system (VPRS) from SpeechWorks that identified the user when the user called from an unregistered telephone number (or no caller ID) through the use of a personal phrase spoken by the user (e.g., "Hello Infone!") after the welcome tone.
Boba liberal
Boba liberal is a term mostly used within the Asian diaspora communities in the West, especially in the United States. It describes someone of East or Southeast Asian descent living in the West who has a shallow, surface-level liberal outlook. It is also occasionally used to describe conservatives who weaponize their East or Southeast Asian identity. The neologism emerged among the Asian American leftist community on Twitter who accused "boba liberals" of only holding their liberal beliefs to appear more white-adjacent by engaging in progressive social movements or viewpoints, while at the same time disregarding and trivializing issues concerning Asians. Mary Chao, writing for The North Jersey Record, said that "Asians call peers boba liberals when they aspire to liberal whiteness." An article in The Yale Herald described it as a term "used to describe the ethnocentric politics of Asian Americans, usually of East Asian descent, who exclusively advocate for issues that benefit themselves, without acknowledging problematic dimensions of their own history and working to support other people of color." The feminist magazine Fem said that "the faces of boba liberalism are Asian Americans that are part of the middle and upper economic class. As a result, boba liberals disregard the negative effects of capitalism because they profit from it. For instance, boba liberals tend to focus on advocating for Asian representation in white spaces, or discussing whether or not wearing chopsticks in one's hair is culture appropriation. These topics are popular within boba liberal circles, all while dialogue regarding inequality, globalization, and racial injustice are purposely neglected." UnHerd notes that conservative Asian Americans have used the term not to critique capitalism, but to "aim at a small but influential group of progressive Asian-American activists who are supposedly selling out other Asians, especially working-class Asians, in order to win brownie points from elite, generally white liberals." MRAsians have similarly used the term to attack Asian American feminists who supported the Black Lives Matter movement. The Asian identity of boba liberals has often been accused of being shallow and superficial. Boba liberals are accused of using surface-level stereotypical Asian traits such as liking boba tea to bolster their Asian credentials. Plan A Magazine, an Asian diaspora magazine, described the film Crazy Rich Asians and the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat as "boba liberal media", calling them the result of "a specific kind of atomized identity politics". Other media outlets have connected the Crazy Rich Asians film to boba liberalism. == Controversy == The term "boba liberal" was coined in 2019 by Vietnamese American Twitter user Redmond (@diaspora_is_red) to analyze a form of Asian American liberalism through a Marxist lens. Redmond has criticized the misappropriation of their neologism by stripping away the Marxist framework by failing to discuss "socialism, communism, the capitalist system, imperialism, and the diaspora bourgeoisie" and conflating "boba liberalism" with the flawed concept of "East Asian privilege". In 2024, Redmond criticized misuse of the term by conservatives and liberals, and said "The term boba liberalism can go away for all I care. It's corny and stale". === United States === One commentator described boba liberals as supporting policies that primarily benefit upper-income Asian-Americans, and not necessarily the Asian-American community as a whole. Therefore, while the word "liberal" is used in the term, it is not mutually exclusive to one specific ideology, as it may also extend to conservative-aligned Asians in some areas, as they would often take advantage of the "model minority" label by defending such measures.
Voice user interface
A voice user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface. Voice user interfaces have been added to automobiles, home automation systems, computer operating systems, home appliances like washing machines and microwave ovens, and television remote controls. They are the primary way of interacting with virtual assistants on smartphones and smart speakers. Older automated attendants (which route phone calls to the correct extension) and interactive voice response systems (which conduct more complicated transactions over the phone) can respond to the pressing of keypad buttons via DTMF tones, but those with a full voice user interface allow callers to speak requests and responses without having to press any buttons. Newer voice command devices are speaker-independent, so they can respond to multiple voices, regardless of accent or dialectal influences. They are also capable of responding to several commands at once, separating vocal messages, and providing appropriate feedback, accurately imitating a natural conversation. == Overview == A VUI is the interface to any speech application. Only a short time ago, controlling a machine by simply talking to it was only possible in science fiction. Until recently, this area was considered to be artificial intelligence. However, advances in technologies like text-to-speech, speech-to-text, natural language processing, and cloud services contributed to the mass adoption of these types of interfaces. VUIs have become more commonplace, and people are taking advantage of the value that these hands-free, eyes-free interfaces provide in many situations. VUIs rely on the ability to process input reliably, inconsistent performance often leads to decreased user engagement and negative feedback. Designing a good VUI requires interdisciplinary talents of computer science, linguistics and human factors such as psychology. Even with advanced development tools, constructing an effective VUI requires understanding of both the tasks to be performed, as well as the target audience that will use the final system. The closer the VUI matches the user's mental model of the task, the easier it will be to use with little or no training, resulting in both higher efficiency and higher user satisfaction. A VUI designed for the general public should emphasize ease of use and provide a lot of help and guidance for first-time callers. In contrast, a VUI designed for a small group of power users (including field service workers), should focus more on productivity and less on help and guidance. Such applications should streamline the call flows, minimize prompts, eliminate unnecessary iterations and allow elaborate "mixed initiative dialogs", which enable callers to enter several pieces of information in a single utterance and in any order or combination. In short, speech applications have to be carefully crafted for the specific business process that is being automated. Not all business processes render themselves equally well for speech automation. In general, the more complex the inquiries and transactions are, the more challenging they will be to automate, and the more likely they will be to fail with the general public. In some scenarios, automation is simply not applicable, so live agent assistance is the only option. A legal advice hotline, for example, would be very difficult to automate. On the flip side, speech is perfect for handling quick and routine transactions, like changing the status of a work order, completing a time or expense entry, or transferring funds between accounts. == History == Early applications for VUI included voice-activated dialing of phones, either directly or through a (typically Bluetooth) headset or vehicle audio system. In 2007, a CNN business article reported that voice command was over a billion dollar industry and that companies like Google and Apple were trying to create speech recognition features. In the years since the article was published, the world has witnessed a variety of voice command devices. Additionally, Google has created a speech recognition engine called Pico TTS and Apple released Siri. Voice command devices are becoming more widely available, and innovative ways for using the human voice are always being created. For example, Business Week suggests that the future remote controller is going to be the human voice. Currently Xbox Live allows such features and Jobs hinted at such a feature on the new Apple TV. == Voice command software products on computing devices == Both Apple Mac and Windows PC provide built in speech recognition features for their latest operating systems. === Microsoft Windows === Two Microsoft operating systems, Windows 7 and Windows Vista, provide speech recognition capabilities. Microsoft integrated voice commands into their operating systems to provide a mechanism for people who want to limit their use of the mouse and keyboard, but still want to maintain or increase their overall productivity. ==== Windows Vista ==== With Windows Vista voice control, a user may dictate documents and emails in mainstream applications, start and switch between applications, control the operating system, format documents, save documents, edit files, efficiently correct errors, and fill out forms on the Web. The speech recognition software learns automatically every time a user uses it, and speech recognition is available in English (U.S.), English (U.K.), German (Germany), French (France), Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional), and Chinese (Simplified). In addition, the software comes with an interactive tutorial, which can be used to train both the user and the speech recognition engine. ==== Windows 7 ==== In addition to all the features provided in Windows Vista, Windows 7 provides a wizard for setting up the microphone and a tutorial on how to use the feature. ==== Mac OS X ==== All Mac OS X computers come pre-installed with the speech recognition software. The software is user-independent, and it allows for a user to, "navigate menus and enter keyboard shortcuts; speak checkbox names, radio button names, list items, and button names; and open, close, control, and switch among applications." However, the Apple website recommends a user buy a commercial product called Dictate. === Commercial products === If a user is not satisfied with the built in speech recognition software or a user does not have a built speech recognition software for their OS, then a user may experiment with a commercial product such as Braina Pro or DragonNaturallySpeaking for Windows PCs, and Dictate, the name of the same software for Mac OS. == Voice command mobile devices == Any mobile device running Android OS, Microsoft Windows Phone, iOS 9 or later, or Blackberry OS provides voice command capabilities. In addition to the built-in speech recognition software for each mobile phone's operating system, a user may download third party voice command applications from each operating system's application store: Apple App store, Google Play, Windows Phone Marketplace (initially Windows Marketplace for Mobile), or BlackBerry App World. === Android OS === Google has developed an open source operating system called Android, which allows a user to perform voice commands such as: send text messages, listen to music, get directions, call businesses, call contacts, send email, view a map, go to websites, write a note, and search Google. The speech recognition software is available for all devices since Android 2.2 "Froyo", but the settings must be set to English. Google allows for the user to change the language, and the user is prompted when he or she first uses the speech recognition feature if he or she would like their voice data to be attached to their Google account. If a user decides to opt into this service, it allows Google to train the software to the user's voice. Google introduced the Google Assistant with Android 7.0 "Nougat". It is much more advanced than the older version. Amazon.com has the Echo that uses Amazon's custom version of Android to provide a voice interface. === Microsoft Windows === Windows Phone is Microsoft's mobile device's operating system. On Windows Phone 7.5, the speech app is user independent and can be used to: call someone from your contact list, call any phone number, redial the last number, send a text message, call your voice mail, open an application, read appointments, query phone status, and search the web. In addition, speech can also be used during a phone call, and the following actions are possible during a phone call: press a number, turn the speaker phone on, or call someone, which puts the current call on hold. Windows 10 introduces Cortana, a voice control system that replaces the formerly used voice control on Windows
Attention inequality
Attention inequality is the inequality of distribution of attention across users on social networks, people in general, and for scientific papers. Yun Family Foundation introduced "Attention Inequality Coefficient" as a measure of inequality in attention and arguments it by the close interconnection with wealth inequality. == Relationship to economic inequality == Attention inequality is related to economic inequality since attention is an economically scarce good. The same measures and concepts as in classical economy can be applied for attention economy. The relationship develops also beyond the conceptual level—considering the AIDA process, attention is the prerequisite for real monetary income on the Internet. On data of 2018, a significant relationship between likes and comments on Facebook to donations is proven for non-profit organizations. == Attention economy == The attention economy refers to the practice of maximizing the attention users give to a product for advertising-related reasons. Attention economy remains one of the most common forms of advertising, and has been steadily increasing thanks to new technologies such as television, internet and social media. It is one of the most widely-used approaches to economy for its effectiveness for maximising the noticeability of a certain product. == Attention inequality in social media == In social media, attention inequality refers to the unequal distribution of users' attention on social media platforms. This means that instead of an equal distribution of attention, fewer sources receive a disproportionate share of attention, leaving many unnoticed. This phenomenon is possibly the result of social media algorithms, which are commonly designed to drive maximum engagement. This phenomenon is a large factor in the polarization and creation of echo-chambers. Social media algorithms tend to note content that is already performing well and display it to more users, while content that is equally engaging or well-made is not recommended to users. Posts that trigger strong emotions usually out-perform more "uncontroversial" content. When many users interact with the post, it signals the algorithm that the specific post drives engagement. The algorithm then tends to recommend that type of content to an exponential number of people, potentially outperforming "un-emotional" content. These factors, when combined, tend to create an unequal social media environment. == Attention inequality in science == According to a recent 2025 study about research inequality among scientists published in Information Processing and Management, scientific discourse is restricted to a small group of connected scientists, and is frequently not an accurate representation of the whole scientific community. Using citation-network analysis in the fields of nanoscience and chemical physics, the study claims that a group of connected scientists has a significant notability in the scientific community. The calculated connection strength between these scientists is estimated to be about 4.5, the study also says that these authors cite each other four times more often than would be predicted in a random network, whereas ordinary scientists that exist outside of this group only reach an estimated connection strength of 0.9. The study findings suggest that that scientific attention is not distributed by merit, but rather by the connectedness of the scientists involved in the research. == Extent == As data of 2008 shows, 50% of the attention is concentrated on approximately 0.2% of all hostnames, and 80% on 5% of hostnames. The Gini coefficient of attention distribution lay in 2008 at over 0.921 for such commercial domains names as ac.jp and at 0.985 for .org-domains. The Gini coefficient was measured on Twitter in 2016 for the number of followers as 0.9412, for the number of mentions as 0.9133, and for the number of retweets as 0.9034. For comparison, the world's income Gini coefficient was 0.68 in 2005 and 0.904 in 2018. More than 96% of all followers, 93% of the retweets, and 93% of all mentions are owned by 20% of Twitter. == Causes == At least for scientific papers, today's consensus states that inequality is unexplainable by variations of quality and individual talent. The Matthew effect plays a significant role in the emergence of attention inequality—those who already enjoy large amounts of attention get even more attention, and those who do not lose even more. Ranking algorithms based on relevance to the user have been found to alleviate the inequality of the number of posts across topics.