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Henry II of Trastámara (1366–1367, 1369–1379)
Henry II of Castile, also known as Henry of Trastámara, from the Latin “Tras Tamaris” (or beyond the Tambre River), King of Castile and León (1366–1367, 1369–1379) was the first king of the Trastámara Dynasty. In summary, it was a minor branch of the house of Burgundy (or an “Iberian extension” of it), with presence in the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Naples. Most notably, it began playing an essential role in the kingdom of Castile, but after the Compromise of Caspe, its power extended decisively to the kingdom of Aragon (1412). Henry II was the illegitimate son of Alfonso XI and his lover Leonor de Guzmán. He waged a civil war against his stepbrother, Peter I, legitimate heir to the throne, as the son of Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal, Queen of Castile. Henry’s determination to be recognized as king led him to employ the arts in a campaign to discredit his stepbrother and tarnish his image, portraying himself as a defender of the faith with the right to rule. He built the Royal Chapel (1371) in the main church of Córdoba (today’s Mosque/Cathedral) for the burial of his father and grandfather, Ferdinand IV, in order to underscore his connection to the royal line, and refurbished the Puerta del Perdón (Gate of Forgiveness) in 1377, the main entrance to the church, for use as a dramatic stage for public events. 
  • 5.1K
  • 13 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Family in Medieval Society
One of the periods with the greatest social, cultural, and religious changes was, without a doubt, the European medieval period. The concept of “Family” was one of the fields that gradually evolved, from individuals who shared the same biological lineage, to members of the same “House”. One of the ways to study the concept of “Family” in ancient periods is through a bioarchaeological perspective, where both anthropology and genetics have proven to be essential disciplines for studying “Families”. Through burial rituals, observing whether the graves were single or multiple, as is carried out in the study of human remains, it discusses the profound contribution of anthropology to the “Family” investigation, through mobility studies, the investigation of biological sex, observing certain congenital anomalies or, even, the study of certain ancient infectious diseases. Concerning genetics, the study of bones or teeth allows us to determine whether individuals were from the same close family or if they belonged to the same lineage through the maternal and paternal sides, being one of the only scientific ways of proposing social relationships between individuals, such as that created through adoption.
  • 5.1K
  • 28 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Spent Oil Bleaching Earths
Spent oil bleaching earth (SOBE) is a waste product obtained in the refining process of oil. It is estimated that 120 million tons of oil are processed with bleaching earth worldwide, generating 2.5 million tons of spent bleaching earth as residue. Moreover, the serious fire and contamination risks that arise during storage and disposal of spent bleaching earth require appropriate technical solutions. The current treatment of SOBE residue is not in line with the new circular economy policies promoted by the European Union, since in most cases it is disposed of in landfills. New technologies that allow oil recovery and treatment of the earths, aiming to convert them into useful products are then needed. 
  • 5.1K
  • 26 Jul 2021
Topic Review
Fault-Tolerant Control
Fault-tolerant controllers (FTCs) can be defined as controllers that are able to tolerate faults and keep the control performance in the ideal range in the presence of faults. FTC approaches can be categorized into two main categories: Passive FTCs and Active FTC. Passive FTCs are not dependent on fault detection and isolation (FDI) modules and can keep the desired controller performance without considering the type and size of fault. Active FTCs are equipped with the FDI module and behave differently to different kinds of fault.
  • 5.1K
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Binders Used for the Manufacturing of Composite Materials
Binders, or tackifiers, have become widespread in the production of new composite materials by liquid composite molding (LCM) techniques due to their ability to stabilize preforms during laying-up and impregnation, as well as to improve fracture toughness of the obtained composites, which is very important in aviation, automotive, ship manufacturing, etc. Furthermore, they can be used in modern methods of automatic laying of dry fibers into preforms, which significantly reduces the labor cost of the manufacturing process.
  • 5.1K
  • 19 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites
Due exceptional properties such as its high-temperature resistance, mechanical characteristics, and relatively lower price, the demand for carbon fiber has been increasing over the past years. The widespread use of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers or plastics (CFRP) has attracted many industries.
  • 5.1K
  • 10 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Dilophosauridae
Dilophosauridae is a family of medium to large sized theropod dinosaurs. The name Dilophosauridae is derived from Greek, with “di-” meaning “two,” “lophos” meaning “crest,” “sauros” meaning “lizard,” and “-idae” meaning “family”. While the name suggests that all dilophosaurids have two crests, this is not applicable to all dilophosaurids. The Dilophosauridae is anchored by its type genus, Dilophosaurus, and therefore the name comes from the distinctive two crests of the genus.
  • 5.1K
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
E-Fuels
Power-to-X (PtX) are fuel production pathways in which electricity is converted into various gaseous or liquid fuels, such as e-hydrogen, e-methanol, e-methane, dimethyl ether (E-DME), e-ammonia, or e-diesel. These fuels are also named electrofuels (e-fuel) or power-to-liquid (PtL) and are mentioned in the Annexes of the RED II amendments as alternative options for the decarbonisation of the transport sector. Some of these molecules still contain carbon atoms, thus producing CO2 when used for energy production. The carbon source for the synthesis of e-fuels has to be carefully analysed to define them really carbon neutral.
  • 5.1K
  • 27 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Deepfake Detection Datasets
Deepfakes are notorious for their unethical and malicious applications to achieve economic, political, and social reputation goals. Although deepfakes were initially associated with entertainment such as movie visual effects, camera filters, and digital avatars, they are defined as “believable generated media by Deep Neural Network” and have evolved into a mainstream tool for facial forgery. With the development of multiple forgery methods, deepfake data are increasing at a annual rate of ~300%. However, the data published online have different forgery qualities. 
  • 5.1K
  • 28 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Rural Tourism Destination
Rural tourism is considered a high potential form of tourism, enhanced by the demand for more sustainable and nature-based solutions, and able to contribute to territory resilience. A rural area is not necessarily a tourist destination, but it might become one, if agricultural enterprises are willing to diversify their economic activities by investing in rural tourism, and local actors provide active support and co-participation.
  • 5.1K
  • 05 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Desert Island
A deserted island or uninhabited island is an island that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often used in movies or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves and some are privately owned. Devon Island in Canada is claimed to be the largest uninhabited island in the world. Small coral atolls or islands usually have no source of fresh water, but at times a fresh water lens (Ghyben–Herzberg lens) can be reached with a well.
  • 5.1K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Primitive Clay Oven
The primitive clay oven, or earthen oven / cob oven, has been used since time immemorial by diverse cultures and societies, primarily for, but not exclusive to, baking before the invention of cast-iron stoves, and gas and electric ovens. The general build and shape were, mostly, common to all peoples, with only slight variations in size and in materials used to construct the oven. In primitive courtyards and farmhouses, earthen ovens were built on the ground. In Arabian, Palestinian, Middle-Eastern and North-African societies, bread was often baked within a clay oven called in some Arabic dialects a tabun (also transliterated taboon, from the Arabic: طابون), or else in a clay oven called a tannour, and in other dialects mas'ad. The clay oven, synonymous with the Hebrew word tannour (= oven), was shaped like a truncated cone, with an opening either at the top or bottom from which to stoke the fire. Others were made cylindrical with an opening at the top. Built and used in biblical times as the family, neighbourhood, or village oven, clay ovens continue to be made in parts of the Middle East today.
  • 5.1K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Skid Resistance in Road Transport
Skid resistance is a significant feature that provides consistent traffic safety management for road pavements. An appropriate level of Skid resistance describes the contribution that the pavement surface makes to tire/road friction, and the surface of the road pavement can reduce vehicle operation cost, traffic accidents, and fatalities, particularly in wet conditions. Wet conditions decrease the level of the skid resistance (pavement friction), and this may lead to serious struggles related to driving on the road pavement (e.g., skidding or hydroplaning), which contributes to higher crash rates. The knowledge of skid resistance is essential to ensure reliable traffic management in transportation systems. Thus, a suitable methodology of skid resistance measurement and the understanding of the characterization of the road pavement are key to allow safe driving conditions.
  • 5.1K
  • 23 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Power Architecture
Power Architecture is a registered trademark for similar reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale/NXP, AppliedMicro, LSI, Teledyne e2v and Synopsys. The governing body is Power.org, comprising over 40 companies and organizations. "Power Architecture" is a broad term including all products based on newer POWER, PowerPC and Cell processors. The term "Power Architecture" should not be confused with IBM's different generations of "POWER Instruction Set Architecture", an earlier instruction set for IBM RISC processors of the 1990s from which the PowerPC instruction set was derived. Power Architecture is a family name describing processor architecture, software, toolchain, community and end-user appliances and not a strict term describing specific products or technologies. More details and documentation on the Power Architecture can be found on the IBM Portal for OpenPOWER.
  • 5.1K
  • 18 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Oxadiazole
Nowadays, an increasing number of heterocyclic-based drugs found application in medicinal chemistry and, in particular, as anticancer agents. In this context, oxadiazoles—five-membered aromatic rings—emerged for their interesting biological properties
  • 5.1K
  • 29 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Supergiant Star
Supergiants are among the most massive and most luminous stars. Supergiant stars occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram with absolute visual magnitudes between about −3 and −8. The temperature range of supergiant stars spans from about 3,400 K to over 20,000 K.
  • 5.1K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Emergence of Society 5.0
The Society 5.0 emerged as an Japanese government program in which the government wish to establish a better, super-smart and more prosperous human-centered society, with the support of the technological innovations. The goal  of the program is also to recover the Japanese economy. The similar program is  known in Europe as  Industry 4.0. or Fourth Industrial revolution and in USA as Industrial Internet.
  • 5.1K
  • 17 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Left-Brain Interpreter
The left-brain interpreter is a neuropsychological concept developed by the psychologist Michael S. Gazzaniga and the neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux. It refers to the construction of explanations by the left brain hemisphere in order to make sense of the world by reconciling new information with what was known before. The left-brain interpreter attempts to rationalize, reason and generalize new information it receives in order to relate the past to the present. Left-brain interpretation is a case of the lateralization of brain function that applies to "explanation generation" rather than other lateralized activities. Although the concept of the left-brain interpreter was initially based on experiments on patients with split-brains, it has since been shown to apply to the everyday behavior of people at large.
  • 5.1K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Physical Unclonable Function
A Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is hardware that acts as a one-way function, whose each different instance provides unique outputs for the same distinct input. Although recent research has demonstrated the merits of PUFs as security primitives for resource-constrained computer systems, better implementations of them need to be identified by future research, in order for them to be commercially adopted. Nevertheless, PUFs have already found application in the implementation of a large number of cryptographic protocols and other security solutions. A number of well-known metrics have been proposed in the literature in order to assess the quality of individual PUF implementations as security mechanisms, in terms of the stability, uniqueness and randomness of their responses.
  • 5.1K
  • 24 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Potentially Toxic Elements
Potentially toxic element (PTE) pollution is a major abiotic stress, which reduces plant growth and affects food quality by entering the food chain, and ultimately poses hazards to human health.
  • 5.1K
  • 18 May 2021
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