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Topic Review
Women in Taoism
The roles of women in Taoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/, /ˈtaʊ-/) (also spelled "Daoism" /ˈdaʊ-/) have differed from the traditional patriarchy over women in ancient and imperial China. Chinese women had special importance in some Taoist schools that recognized their transcendental abilities to communicate with deities, who frequently granted women with revealed texts and scriptures. Women first came to prominence in the Highest Clarity School, which was founded in the 4th century by a woman, Wei Huacun. The Tang dynasty (618-907) was a highpoint for the importance of Daoist women, when one-third of the Shangqing clergy were women, including many aristocratic Daoist nuns. The number of Daoist women decreased until the 12th century when the Complete Perfection School, which ordained Sun Bu'er as the only woman among its original disciples, put women in positions of power. In the 18th and 19th centuries, women Daoists practiced and discussed nüdan (女丹, "women's neidan inner alchemy"), involving gender-specific practices of breath meditation and visualization. Furthermore, Daoist divinities and cults have long traditions in China, for example, the Queen Mother of the West, the patron of xian immortality, He Xiangu, one of the Eight Immortals, and Mazu, the protectress of sailors and fishermen.
  • 5.6K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Jagdtiger
The Jagdtiger ("Hunting Tiger"; officially designated Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf. B) is a German casemate-type heavy tank destroyer from World War II. It was built upon the slightly lengthened chassis of a Tiger II. Its ordnance inventory designation was Sd.Kfz. 186. The 71-tonne Jagdtiger was the heaviest armored fighting vehicle (AFV) used operationally by any participant nation of WWII and is the heaviest combat vehicle of any type to achieve series production during the conflict. The vehicle was armed with a 128 mm Pak 44 L/55 main gun which was capable of outranging and defeating any tank or AFV fielded by the Allied forces. It saw brief service in small numbers from late 1944 up until the end of the war on both the Western and Eastern Front. Although 150 were ordered, only around eighty were produced. Due to an excessive weight and a significantly underpowered drivetrain system, the Jagdtiger was continuously plagued with various mobility and mechanical problems. At present, three Jagdtigers survive in different museums around the world.
  • 5.6K
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Protein Quality Control (PQC)
Eukaryotic cells have a well-organized, tightly regulated protein quality control (PQC) system. This quality control system includes the molecular chaperones, ubiquitin/proteasome-dependent protein degradation, and autophagy machinery (target and uptake of non-native conformer in the spatial compartments) that consistently monitors and maintains the conformational state of cellular proteins.
  • 5.6K
  • 18 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Encyclopaedia Metallum
Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives (commonly known as Metal Archives per the URL or just MA) is a website which lists bands from various forms of heavy metal music. Encyclopaedia Metallum was described by Matt Sullivan of Nashville Scene as "the Internet's central database for all that is 'tr00' in the metal world." Terrorizer described the site as "a fully-exhaustive list of pretty much every metal band ever, with full discographies, an active forum and an interlinking members list that shows the ever-incestuous beauty of the metal scene". Nevertheless, there are exceptions for bands which fall under disputed genres not accepted by the website. Encyclopaedia Metallum attempts to provide comprehensive information on each band, such as a discography, logos, pictures, lyrics, line-ups, biography, trivia and user-submitted reviews. The site also provides a system for submitting bands to the archives. The website is free of advertisements and is run completely independently.
  • 5.6K
  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review
LAV (Armoured Vehicle)
The Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) is a series of armoured vehicles built by General Dynamics Land Systems – Canada (GDLS-C), a London, Ontario-based subsidiary of General Dynamics. It is a license-produced version of the Mowag Piranha. The LAV family came about from the Armoured Vehicle General Purpose (AVGP) requirement of the Canadian Army. The first generation of LAV was created by Mowag for the Armoured Vehicle General Purpose (AVGP) requirement of the Canadian Army. This was a 6x6 variant of the Piranha I produced by General Motors Diesel in London, Ontario. Since entering service in 1976, it has undergone a number of upgrades. The LAV II introduced the now-familiar 8x8 configuration. The LAV continues to form the backbone of the Canadian Army's combat vehicle fleet. The LAV series of vehicles exist in a number of different variants and are used in a number of different roles such as armoured personnel carriers, engineering vehicles, command posts, ambulances and armoured recovery vehicles.
  • 5.6K
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Adaptability Quotient
Adaptability Quotient (AQ) is a metric of adaptability used to measure performance in the workplace and assess individual potential. The earliest article published by Stuart Parkin in 2010 gave rise to the term Adaptability Quotient. This has inspired many others to expand and research the area. A recent deep dive into Adaptability Quotient can be found at SingularityU London Adaptability Webinar: "Developing adaptable workforces, a roadmap to recovery", where Ross Thornley, is joined by Jason Slater from UNIDO and Professor Nicolas Deuschel . Additionally Amin Toufani in 2014, shares his insights during his public lecture at Singularity University. he defines AQ as the ability to realize optimal outcomes based on recent or future change. Ross Thornley and Mike Raven's work at AQai is deepening the scientific research of AQ in the workplace, opening up new frontiers of understanding and links across multiple disciplines. Their A.C.E model is widely seen as the most holistic and comprehensive assessment. AQ is defined as, "Measuring the abilities, characteristics, and environmental factors which impact the successful behaviors and actions of people, and organizations to effectively respond to uncertainty, new information, or changed circumstances.” Decoding AQ 2020, Ross Thornley. (As of 2019), there is a growing body of literature surrounding adaptability, and consequent interest in being able to harness, measure, and quantify adaptability in the workplace. Adaptability was identified as the “new competitive advantage” by the Harvard Business Review in 2011. In 2014, The Flux Report (published by Right Management in the UK) revealed that 91% of HR managers thought that: "People will be recruited on their ability to deal with change and uncertainty" as opposed to other skills. Specifically adaptive performance in the research literature means numerous organizational scholars have recognized that traditional models of performance are static and need to be augmented to include "responsiveness to changing job requirements" — labeled adaptive performance (AP; Allworth & Hesketh, 1999, p. 98; Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007; Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, & Plamondon, 2000).
  • 5.6K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Long and Short Scale
The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes. For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one million, the two scales are identical. For larger numbers, starting with 109, the two systems differ. For identical names, the long scale proceeds by powers of one million, whereas the short scale proceeds by powers of one thousand. For example, "one billion" means one thousand millions in the short scale, while it means one million millions in the long scale. The long scale system uses additional terms for the intervening values, typically replacing the word ending -ion with -iard.
  • 5.6K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Cline
In biology, a cline (from the Greek κλίνειν klinein, meaning "to lean") is a measurable gradient in a single character (or biological trait) of a species across its geographical range. First coined by Julian Huxley in 1938, the "character" of the cline referred to is usually genetic (e.g. allele frequency, blood type), or phenotypic (e.g. body size, skin pigmentation). Clines can show smooth, continuous gradation in a character, or they may show more abrupt changes in the trait from one geographic region to the next. A cline refers to a spatial gradient in a specific, singular trait, rather than a collection of traits; a single population can therefore have as many clines as it has traits, at least in principle. Additionally, Huxley recognised that these multiple independent clines may not act in concordance with each other. For example, it has been observed that in Australia, birds generally become smaller the further towards the north of the country they are found. In contrast, the intensity of their plumage colouration follows a different geographical trajectory, being most vibrant where humidity is highest and becoming less vibrant further into the arid centre of the country. Because of this, clines were defined by Huxley as being an "auxiliary taxonomic principle"; that is, clinal variation in a species is not awarded taxonomic recognition in the way subspecies or species are. While the terms "ecotype" and "cline" are sometimes used interchangeably, they do in fact differ in that "ecotype" refers to a population which differs from other populations in a number of characters, rather than the single character that varies amongst populations in a cline.
  • 5.6K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
White Privilege
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits. In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States , academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh described the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal. Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a proxy but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose alternative definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups. Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the seemingly sudden hostility from right-wing critics since approximately 2014.
  • 5.6K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Orion
Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the night sky, is steeped in mythology and astronomical significance. Named after the legendary hunter from Greek mythology, Orion is adorned with bright stars, including the famous Orion's Belt, and hosts a plethora of celestial wonders, such as the Orion Nebula, making it a favorite among stargazers.
  • 5.6K
  • 15 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale
The Gudjonsson suggestibility scale (GSS) is a psychological test that measures suggestibility of a subject. It was created in 1983 by Icelandic psychologist Gísli Hannes Guðjónsson. It involves reading a short story to the subject and testing recall. This test has been used in court cases in several jurisdictions but has been the subject of various criticisms.
  • 5.6K
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Satellitosis in Neurological Disease
The secondary structures of Scherer commonly known as perineuronal and perivascular satellitosis have been identified as a histopathological hallmark of diffuse, invasive, high-grade gliomas. They are recognised as perineuronal satellitosis when clusters of neoplastic glial cells surround neurons cell bodies and perivascular satellitosis when such tumour cells surround blood vessels infiltrating Virchow–Robin spaces. 
  • 5.6K
  • 27 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Election Threshold
The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the primary vote which a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to any representation in a legislature. This limit can operate in various ways. For example, in party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes (e.g., 5%), either nationally or in a particular electoral district, to obtain any seats in the legislature. In multi-member constituencies using preferential voting, besides the electoral threshold, to be awarded a seat, a candidate is also required to achieve a quota, either on the primary vote or after distribution of preferences, which depends on the number of members to be return from a constituency. The effect of an electoral threshold is to deny representation to small parties or to force them into coalitions, with the presumption of rendering the election system more stable by keeping out fringe parties. However, critics argue out that in the absence of a ranked ballot system, supporters of minor parties are effectively disenfranchised and denied the right of representation by someone of their choosing. Two boundaries can be defined: a threshold of representation is the minimum vote share that might yield a party a seat (under the most favorable circumstances for the party), while the threshold of exclusion is the maximum vote share that could be insufficient to yield a seat (under the least favorable circumstances). Lijphart suggested calculating the informal threshold as the mean of these.
  • 5.6K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA Vaccines
The SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 disease) uses the Spike proteins of its envelope for infecting target cells expressing on the membrane the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) enzyme that acts as a receptor. To control the pandemic, genetically engineered vaccines have been designed for inducing neutralizing antibodies against the Spike proteins. These vaccines do not act like traditional protein-based vaccines, as they deliver the message in the form of mRNA or DNA to host cells that then produce and expose the Spike protein on the membrane (from which it can be shed in soluble form) to alert the immune system. Since the genetically engineered vaccines have been modified to be more stable and because they are distributed via liponanoparticles to various tissues and organs, this type of products may cause unforeseen serious adverse effects.
  • 5.6K
  • 19 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Formal Methods for Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges
The use of formal approaches in machine learning is becoming increasingly crucial as ML systems are utilized in more critical applications such as autonomous driving and medical diagnosis. Formal methods give a rigorous approach to evaluating the accuracy and reliability of ML systems, which is critical for ensuring their safety and efficacy. Formal approaches, which use mathematical models and logic-based reasoning, can assist discover and eliminate flaws and vulnerabilities in ML systems, lowering the risk of unintended effects and boosting overall performance. As a result, using formal approaches is vital for developing trustworthy ML systems that can be depended on in safety-sensitive applications.
  • 5.6K
  • 22 May 2023
Topic Review
Recent Trends in Copper Metallization
The Cu/low-k damascene process was introduced to alleviate the increase in the RC delay of Al/SiO2 interconnects, but now that the technology generation has reached 1× nm or lower, a number of limitations have become apparent. Due to the integration limit of low-k materials, the increase in the RC delay due to scaling can only be suppressed through metallization.
  • 5.6K
  • 28 Sep 2022
Topic Review
49,XXXXY Syndrome
49,XXXXY syndrome is a chromosomal condition in boys and men that causes intellectual disability, developmental delays, physical differences, and an inability to father biological children (infertility). Its signs and symptoms vary among affected individuals.
  • 5.6K
  • 23 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Birch Plywood
Increasing demand pressures on the fibre supply are forcing manufacturers to explore using new species in plywood. Here authors investigated aspen and black alder, alone and in combination with birch faces, and with different veneer thicknesses in plywood production.
  • 5.6K
  • 09 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia is a learning disability of written expression, that affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. It is a specific learning disability (SLD) as well as a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding and finger sequencing (the movement of muscles required to write). It often overlaps with other learning disabilities and neurodevelopmental disorders such as speech impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental coordination disorder (DCD). In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), dysgraphia is characterized as a learning disability in the category of written expression, when one's writing skills are below those expected given a person's age measured through intelligence and age-appropriate education. The DSM is unclear in whether writing refers only to the motor skills involved in writing, or if it also includes orthographic skills and spelling. Dysgraphia should be distinguished from agraphia (sometimes called acquired dysgraphia), which is an acquired loss of the ability to write resulting from brain injury, progressive illness, or a stroke. The prevalence of dysgraphia throughout the world is not known, due to difficulties in diagnosis and lack of research.
  • 5.6K
  • 10 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Winemaking By-products
The winemaking by-products and waste, such as wine lees, grape stalks, and vine shoots, are generated from vinification process and after pruning. For their high content in functional and bioactive compounds, they can be recycled into food chain as functional additives to improve the quality of wines and to obtain innovative functional foods and sustainable food packaging, contributing to the sustainability of the wine sector.
  • 5.6K
  • 04 Mar 2021
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