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Topic Review
Pink Tide
The pink tide (Spanish: marea rosa, Portuguese: onda rosa, French: marée rose), or the turn to the left (Spanish: giro a la izquierda, Portuguese: volta à esquerda, French: tournant à gauche), was a political wave and perception of a turn towards left-wing governments in Latin American democracies moving away from the neoliberal economic model at the start of the 21st century. As a term, both phrases are used in contemporary 21st-century political analysis in the news media and elsewhere to refer to a move toward more economic progressive or social progressive policies in Latin America. Such governments have been referred to as "left-of-centre", "left-leaning", and "radical social-democratic". The Latin American countries viewed as part of this ideological trend have been referred to as pink tide nations, with the term post-neoliberalism or socialism of the 21st century being used to describe the movement as well. Some pink tide governments, such as those of Argentina , Brazil , and Venezuela, have been varyingly characterized as being "anti-American", as well as populist, for their rejection of the Washington Consensus, and as authoritarian, particularly in the case of Nicaragua and Venezuela by the 2010s. The pink tide was followed by the conservative wave, a political phenomenon that emerged in the early 2010s as a direct reaction to the pink tide. Some authors have proposed that there are multiple distinct pink tides rather than a single one, with the first pink tide happening during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and a second pink tide encompassing the elections of the late 2010s to early 2020s. A resurgence of the pink tide was kicked off by Mexico in 2018 and Argentina in 2019, and further established by Bolivia in 2020, along with Peru, Honduras, and Chile in 2021, and Colombia in 2022, with the first left-wing president-elect in Colombia's history, according to analysts.
  • 5.5K
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Agri Food Sector
  Definition given the complexity of the sector, each supply chain has some peculiarities that require suitable tools. For this reason, it is difficult to identify a common tool for the implementation of circular practices. However, the use of a shared assessment tool should enable comparison of circular performances and practices among the different stages and supply chains and involving all the actors of the AFS. This collaborative approach is required both vertically (among the stages of the supply chain) and horizontally (among the different supply chains) in order to catalyse the transition towards circular business models and to efficiently implement circular practices.  
  • 5.5K
  • 19 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Bio-Oil
Bio-oil is a the liquid phase obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass. The composition and amount of bio-oil generated depend not only on the type of the biomass but also on the conditions under which pyrolysis is performed. Most fossil fuels can be replaced by bio-oil-derived products. Thus, bio-oil can be used directly or co-fed along with fossil fuels in boilers, transformed into fuel for car engines by hydrodeoxygenation or even used as a more suitable source for hydrogen production than biomass. On the other hand, due to its rich composition in compounds resulting from the pyrolysis of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, bio-oil co-acts as a source of various value-added chemicals such as aromatic compounds.
  • 5.5K
  • 12 May 2021
Topic Review
Phosphoribosyl Pyrophosphate Synthetase
Phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate synthetase (PRS EC 2.7.6.1) is a rate-limiting enzyme that irreversibly catalyzes the formation of phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate (PRPP) from ribose-5-phosphate and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This key metabolite is required for the synthesis of purine and pyrimidine nucleotides, the two aromatic amino acids histidine and tryptophan, the cofactors nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP+), all of which are essential for various life processes. Despite its ubiquity and essential nature across the plant and animal kingdoms, PRPP synthetase displays species-specific characteristics regarding the number of gene copies and architecture permitting interaction with other areas of cellular metabolism. The impact of mutated PRS genes in the model eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae on cell signalling and metabolism may be relevant to the human neuropathies associated with PRPS mutations. Human PRPS1 and PRPS2 gene products are implicated in drug resistance associated with recurrent acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and progression of colorectal cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma.
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  • 02 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Magnesium Supplements and Statin Medication
Many investigations have discovered a connection between statins and magnesium supplements. On one hand, increasing research suggests that chronic hypomagnesemia may be an important factor in the etiology of some metabolic illnesses, including obesity and overweight, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, alterations in lipid metabolism, and low-grade inflammation. Chronic metabolic problems seem to be prevented by a high Mg intake combined with diet and/or supplements.
  • 5.5K
  • 23 Apr 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Working Capital
The simplest net working capital can be defined as the difference between the value of current assets and short-term liabilities together with other short-term accruals. It is equivalent to the part of the current assets financed with equity, provisions for liabilities, long-term liabilities, and the remaining part of accruals. Therefore, it is the capital that finances only that part of the current assets that are not financed with short-term liabilities. This amount is financed with fixed capital. Summing up, net working capital is the fixed capital that finances the company’s current assets. 
  • 5.5K
  • 13 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Coherent States
In physics, specifically in quantum mechanics, a coherent state is the specific quantum state of the quantum harmonic oscillator, often described as a state which has dynamics most closely resembling the oscillatory behavior of a classical harmonic oscillator. It was the first example of quantum dynamics when Erwin Schrödinger derived it in 1926, while searching for solutions of the Schrödinger equation that satisfy the correspondence principle. The quantum harmonic oscillator and hence, the coherent states arise in the quantum theory of a wide range of physical systems. For instance, a coherent state describes the oscillating motion of a particle confined in a quadratic potential well (for an early reference, see e.g. Schiff's textbook). The coherent state describes a state in a system for which the ground-state wavepacket is displaced from the origin of the system. This state can be related to classical solutions by a particle oscillating with an amplitude equivalent to the displacement. These states, expressed as eigenvectors of the lowering operator and forming an overcomplete family, were introduced in the early papers of John R. Klauder, e.g. . In the quantum theory of light (quantum electrodynamics) and other bosonic quantum field theories, coherent states were introduced by the work of Roy J. Glauber in 1963. The concept of coherent states has been considerably abstracted; it has become a major topic in mathematical physics and in applied mathematics, with applications ranging from quantization to signal processing and image processing (see Coherent states in mathematical physics). For this reason, the coherent states associated to the quantum harmonic oscillator are sometimes referred to as canonical coherent states (CCS), standard coherent states, Gaussian states, or oscillator states.
  • 5.5K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Digital professionalism
Digital professionalism is the term used to describe the emergence of health professionals needing to understand, develop and know appropriate professional behaviour when using digital media. There is currently no accepted or standard definition of this term. The development of digital professionalism is a global issue, which is demonstrated by the growth in research of portable or mobile devices, social media, apps and messaging within health professional higher education and healthcare environments. Digital professionalism is a component of professional identity formation. The knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours associated with developing digital professionalism needs to be introduced early in the health professional curriculum, so that students understand the benefits as well as the risks and challenges of using digital technology at point of care. Modelling of safe, effective and appropriate access and use of mobile or portable devices by qualified health professionals is essential for scaffolding undergraduate health professionals understanding and development of appropriate attributes, to promote formation of positive professional identity when undertaking work integrated learning or professional experience in healthcare environments.
  • 5.5K
  • 28 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Policy Evolution of Chinese New Energy Vehicle Industry
The Chinese new energy vehicle industry policy is divided into three development periods: 2004–2008—promotion policy and technological policy; 2009–2013—financial policy; and 2014–2020—charging infrastructure policy. 
  • 5.5K
  • 29 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Encyclopedia—A Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Community Project
Encyclopedia (ISSN 2309-3366) is a multidisciplinary open access journal that records high-quality entries in encyclopedia format in all research fields. All submitted entries should be peer reviewed before publication online. 
  • 5.5K
  • 15 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Food Wastes as Packaging Materials
Packaging materials have to allow controlled respiration, maintain polymer structure against mechanical damage, prevent microbiological and chemical spoilage of food, and act as a selective gas and water vapor barrier. The most widely used materials in the food packaging industry are glass, plastics, metals, and paper. As mechanical properties of materials are important for food protection, mostly flexible and rigid synthetic packaging materials are preferred.
  • 5.5K
  • 19 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Secular Religion
A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly entities. Among systems that have been characterized as secular religions are capitalism, communism, anarchism, fascism, nationalism, Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity and the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being that developed after the French Revolution .
  • 5.5K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Deontological Ethics
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: Ancient Greek: + Ancient Greek:) is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action. It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences. The term deontological was first used to describe the current, specialised definition by C. D. Broad in his 1930 book, Five Types of Ethical Theory. Older usage of the term goes back to Jeremy Bentham, who coined it prior to 1816 as a synonym of dicastic or censorial ethics (i.e., ethics based on judgement). The more general sense of the word is retained in French, especially in the term code de déontologie (ethical code), in the context of professional ethics. Depending on the system of deontological ethics under consideration, a moral obligation may arise from an external or internal source, such as a set of rules inherent to the universe (ethical naturalism), religious law, or a set of personal or cultural values (any of which may be in conflict with personal desires).
  • 5.5K
  • 16 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.
  • 5.5K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
High Entropy Alloys
High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are alloys that are formed by mixing equal or relatively large proportions of (usually) five or more elements. Prior to the synthesis of these substances, typical metal alloys comprised one or two major components with smaller amounts of other elements. For example, additional elements can be added to iron to improve its properties, thereby creating an iron based alloy, but typically in fairly low proportions, such as the proportions of carbon, manganese, and the like in various steels. Hence, high entropy alloys are a novel class of materials. The term “high-entropy alloys” was coined because the entropy increase of mixing is substantially higher when there is a larger number of elements in the mix, and their proportions are more nearly equal. These alloys are currently the focus of significant attention in materials science and engineering because they have potentially desirable properties. Furthermore, research indicates that some HEAs have considerably better strength-to-weight ratios, with a higher degree of fracture resistance, tensile strength, as well as corrosion and oxidation resistance than conventional alloys. Although HEAs have been studied since the 1980s, research substantially accelerated in the 2010s.
  • 5.5K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Academic Emotions on Learning Effects
Academic emotions can have different influences on learning effects, but these have not been systematically studied. 
  • 5.4K
  • 28 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Smoothies
The word “smoothie” comes from the English term “smooth” (tender, creamy), and defines a creamy non-alcoholic drink with a thick texture similar to that of milkshakes. Smoothies are beverages containing a blend of fruit pulp, fruit juice, ice, yoghurt, and/or milk. This beverage includes only natural ingredients such as puree fruit with fruit juice, and possibly dairy products or/and crushed ice cubes. Their preparation is based on the use of the entire fruit, which is processed from pulp to puree, with only the seeds and peel being removed.
  • 5.4K
  • 26 Sep 2020
Topic Review
Sustainable Tourism in Fiji
The tourism industry has evolved as a major contributor to economic development and employment creation globally. Over the past seven decades, the tourism industry has experienced growth in both developed and developing countries. Although tourism has significant economic benefits, it often compromises environmental quality. Thus, tourism sustainability becomes an important element in managing the industry. Tourism sustainability has emerged as a leading policy paradigm and is important because tourism is a significant contributor to carbon emissions worldwide.
  • 5.4K
  • 02 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Nandigram Violence
Nandigram Violence was violence occurred in Nandigram, East Midnapore, West Bengal, India , in 2007 due to the land acquisition for a project by the Government of West Bengal led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to create special economic zone (SEZ). The policy led to an emergency in the region, and 14 people died in a police shooting. According to CID reports, the Nandigram violence saw a Maoist insurgency in the area[lower-alpha 1] during the protests. But West Bengal Home Secretary himself stated that the presence of Maoists could not be confirmed in Nandigram. The Central Bureau of Investigation later exonerated the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government of responsibility for the shootings. But supporting the violence in Nandigram by his own party workers, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had said earlier "They (the oppositions) have been paid back in the same coin."
  • 5.4K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
MAPK Pathways in Cancer Metastasis
Metastasis is perhaps the most common reason for treatment failure in cancer patients, as well as the leading cause of cancer-related death. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) are serine/threonine-protein kinases that can be activated by a variety of extracellular stimuli including growth factors, cytokines, insulin, environmental factors, and oxidative and genotoxic stress. It is becoming increasingly clear that MAPKs are involved in all the steps required for hyperproliferating cells to develop into metastatic tumors. However, scholars are currently lacking in vivo data to fully understand how MAPK signaling pathways can affect the progression of metastatic disease. 
  • 5.4K
  • 26 May 2022
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