Agriculture and horticulture seek to optimize the capture of solar energy in order to optimize the productivity of plants. Techniques such as timed planting cycles, tailored row orientation, staggered heights between rows and the mixing of plant varieties can improve crop yields. While sunlight is generally considered a plentiful resource, the exceptions highlight the importance of solar energy to agriculture. During the short growing seasons of the Little Ice Age, French and English farmers employed fruit walls to maximize the collection of solar energy. These walls acted as thermal masses and accelerated ripening by keeping plants warm. Early fruit walls were built perpendicular to the ground and facing south, but over time, sloping walls were developed to make better use of sunlight. In 1699, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier even suggested using a tracking mechanism which could pivot to follow the Sun. Applications of solar energy in agriculture aside from growing crops include pumping water, drying crops, brooding chicks and drying chicken manure. More recently the technology has been embraced by vinters, who use the energy generated by solar panels to power grape presses.
What was the purpose of the fruit walls built by French and English farmers?
acted as thermal masses and accelerated ripening by keeping plants warm

PS3's hardware has also been used to build supercomputers for high-performance computing. Fixstars Solutions sells a version of Yellow Dog Linux for PlayStation 3 (originally sold by Terra Soft Solutions). RapidMind produced a stream programming package for PS3, but were acquired by Intel in 2009. Also, on January 3, 2007, Dr. Frank Mueller, Associate Professor of Computer science at NCSU, clustered 8 PS3s. Mueller commented that the 256 MB of system RAM is a limitation for this particular application and is considering attempting to retrofit more RAM. Software includes: Fedora Core 5 Linux ppc64, MPICH2, OpenMP v 2.5, GNU Compiler Collection and CellSDK 1.1. As a more cost-effective alternative to conventional supercomputers, the U.S. military has purchased clusters of PS3 units for research purposes. Retail PS3 Slim units cannot be used for supercomputing, because PS3 Slim lacks the ability to boot into a third-party OS.
Who is buying PS3 clusters instead of supercomputers in order to save some money?
the U.S. military

On June 28, 1776, General Sir Henry Clinton along with 2,000 men and a naval squadron tried to seize Charles Towne, hoping for a simultaneous Loyalist uprising in South Carolina. When the fleet fired cannonballs, they failed to penetrate Fort Sullivan's unfinished, yet thick, palmetto-log walls. No local Loyalists attacked the town from the mainland side, as the British had hoped they would do. Col. Moultrie's men returned fire and inflicted heavy damage on several of the British ships. The British were forced to withdraw their forces, and the Americans renamed the defensive installation as Fort Moultrie in honor of its commander.
What was the British hoping to inspire by their attack on Charles Town?
a simultaneous Loyalist uprising