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Topic Review
Tsunami
A tsunami (Japanese: 津波) (/(t)suːˈnɑːmi, (t)sʊˈ-/ (t)soo-NAH-mee, (t)suu- pronounced [tsɯnami]) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (including detonations, landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances) above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water. Tsunami waves do not resemble normal undersea currents or sea waves because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide. For this reason, it is often referred to as a tidal wave, although this usage is not favoured by the scientific community because it might give the false impression of a causal relationship between tides and tsunamis. Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves, with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called "wave train". Wave heights of tens of metres can be generated by large events. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous, and they can affect entire ocean basins. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history, with at least 230,000 people killed or missing in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Ancient Greece historian Thucydides suggested in his 5th century BC History of the Peloponnesian War that tsunamis were related to submarine earthquakes, but the understanding of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and much remains unknown. Major areas of current research include determining why some large earthquakes do not generate tsunamis while other smaller ones do; accurately forecasting the passage of tsunamis across the oceans; and forecasting how tsunami waves interact with shorelines.
  • 4.4K
  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Resveratrol and Human Skin Lightening
Resveratrol is a polyphenol compound found in many edible plants such as Vitis vinifera, and its inhibitory effects on the catalytic activity, gene expression, and posttranslational modifications of tyrosinase, a key enzyme in the melanin biosynthetic pathway, provide a mechanistic basis for its antimelanogenic effects seen in melanocytic cells, three-dimensionally reconstituted skin models, and in vivo animal models. Recent clinical studies have supported the efficacy of resveratrol and its analogs, such as resveratryl triacetate (RTA) and resveratryl triglycolate (RTG), in human skin lightening. These findings suggest that resveratrol and its analogs are potentially useful as skin lightening agents in cosmetics.
  • 4.4K
  • 29 Jul 2021
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Domestic Violence against Women and COVID-19
Domestic violence against women is defined as harmful behavior that occurs within a home and it involves aggressive and violent conduct towards women. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and following the restrictions imposed to combat the pandemic (lockdowns, staying at home, isolation), domestic violence against women has increased worldwide. The current entry presents existing knowledge and discusses issues important for public awareness.
  • 4.4K
  • 14 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Capillary-Driven Flow Microfluidics
Point-of-care (POC) or near-patient testing allows clinicians to accurately achieve real-time diagnostic results performed at or near to the patient site. The outlook of POC devices is to provide quicker analyses that can lead to well-informed clinical decisions and hence improve the health of patients at the point-of-need. Microfluidics plays an important role in the development of POC devices. However, requirements of handling expertise, pumping systems and complex fluidic controls make the technology unaffordable to the current healthcare systems in the world. In recent years, capillary-driven flow microfluidics has emerged as an attractive microfluidic-based technology to overcome these limitations by offering robust, cost-effective and simple-to-operate devices. The internal wall of the microchannels can be pre-coated with reagents, and by merely dipping the device into the patient sample, the sample can be loaded into the microchannel driven by capillary forces and can be detected via handheld or smartphone-based detectors. The capabilities of capillary-driven flow devices have not been fully exploited in developing POC diagnostics, especially for antimicrobial resistance studies in clinical settings. The purpose of this review is to open up this field of microfluidics to the ever-expanding microfluidic-based scientific community.
  • 4.4K
  • 24 Jul 2020
Topic Review
Volcanic Eruptions
Volcanic eruptions are considered major (very large) when the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) ≥ 5. The nature of the impacts of a VEI ≥ 5 eruption ranges from the destruction of a city, an entire region, climate disturbances as well as to air travel. Even an eruption with VEI < 5 may also have the potential to modify the environment and landscape particularly in proximal and medial facies, as well as surrounding human societies. The variety of environmental destructions due to volcanic eruption differs from primary (e.g., summit collapse, vegetation burning, death), secondary (e.g., atmospheric cooling, global warming), and tertiary (e.g., flood, famine, disease) effects. It is mostly generated by gas emissions, ashes, lava flow, pyroclastic flow, lahar, debris flow, and landslide which results in local and global impacts.
  • 4.4K
  • 14 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Greenwashing in Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a pivotal area of focus, with an increasing number of companies prioritizing its integration into their operational strategies.
  • 4.4K
  • 20 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam
The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) adopted in Cairo, Egypt, on 5 August 1990, (Conference of Foreign Ministers, 9–14 Muharram 1411H in the Islamic calendar) which provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and affirms Islamic sharia as its sole source. CDHRI declares its purpose to be "general guidance for Member States [of the OIC] in the field of human rights". This declaration is widely acknowledged as an Islamic response to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948. It guarantees some, but not all, of the UDHR and serves as a living document of human rights guidelines prescribed for all members of the OIC to follow, but restricts them explicitly to the limits set by the sharia. Because of this limit, the CDHRI has been criticized as an attempt to shield OIC member states from international criticism for human rights violations, as well as for failing to guarantee freedom of religion, justifying corporal punishment and allowing discrimination against non-Muslims and women.
  • 4.4K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Pentacene
Pentacene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon consisting of five linearly-fused benzene rings. This highly conjugated compound is an organic semiconductor. The compound generates excitons upon absorption of ultra-violet (UV) or visible light; this makes it very sensitive to oxidation. For this reason, this compound, which is a purple powder, slowly degrades upon exposure to air and light. Structurally, pentacene is one of the linear acenes, the previous one being tetracene (four fused benzene rings) and the next one being hexacene (six fused benzene rings). In August 2009, a group of researchers from IBM published experimental results of imaging a single molecule of pentacene using an atomic force microscope. In July 2011, they used a modification of scanning tunneling microscopy to experimentally determine the shapes of the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals. In 2012, pentacene-doped p-terphenyl was shown to be effective as the amplifier medium for a room-temperature maser.
  • 4.4K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary development is a process by which people acquire words. Babbling shifts towards meaningful speech as infants grow and produce their first words around the age of one year. In early word learning, infants build their vocabulary slowly. By the age of 18 months, infants can typically produce about 50 words and begin to make word combinations. In order to build their vocabularies, infants must learn about the meanings that words carry. The mapping problem asks how infants correctly learn to attach words to referents. Constraints theories, domain-general views, social-pragmatic accounts, and an emergentist coalition model have been proposed to account for the mapping problem... From an early age, infants use language to communicate. Caregivers and other family members use language to teach children how to act in society. In their interactions with peers, children have the opportunity to learn about unique conversational roles. Through pragmatic directions, adults often offer children cues for understanding the meaning of words. Throughout their school years, children continue to build their vocabulary. In particular, children begin to learn abstract words. Beginning around age 3–5, word learning takes place both in conversation and through reading. Word learning often involves physical context, builds on prior knowledge, takes place in social context, and includes semantic support. The phonological loop and serial order short-term memory may both play an important role in vocabulary development.
  • 4.4K
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
20% Project
The 20% Project is an initiative where company employees are allocated twenty-percent of their paid work time to pursue personal projects. The objective of the program is to inspire innovation in participating employees and ultimately increase company potential. The 20% Project was influenced by a comparable program, launched in 1948, by manufacturing multinational 3M which required employees to have 15% time: to dedicate up to 15 percent of their paid hours to a personal interest. Technology company Google is credited for popularising the 20% concept, with many of their current services being products of employee pet projects. Some schools have also utilized the principles of the 20% Project to foster creativity and boost productivity.
  • 4.4K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Skin Lesion Datasets and Image Preprocessing
Skin lesions affect millions of people worldwide. They can be easily recognized based on their typically abnormal texture and color but are difficult to diagnose due to similar symptoms among certain types of lesions.
  • 4.4K
  • 18 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Sustainability Performance & Sustainable Banking
In the light of Agenda 2030 awareness of sustainability is steadily growing all over the world. Devastating phenomena like pandemics (Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDGs—Agenda 2030)), poverty (Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDGs—Agenda 2030)) as well as climate change (Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDGs—Agenda 2030)) threaten humanity, calling for more sustainable solutions. Although economic growth (Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDGs—Agenda 2030)) is one of the principal goals for a sustainable future, little research has been devoted to the interface of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability and their contribution to the financial sector, in view of sustainable banking. Even fewer are the studies concerning sustainable banking in Greece. This paper attempts a comparative overview of sustainability integration into businesses, focusing on the banking industry. The current theoretical analysis initially provides an extended review of the CSR and sustainability concepts, which is followed by a comprehensive analysis of non-financial disclosures (NFDs) and their business value, providing some evidence from Greece. 
  • 4.4K
  • 15 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class
The Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class (X253/C253) is a compact luxury crossover SUV introduced in 2015 for the 2016 model year that replaces the GLK-Class. According to Mercedes-Benz, it is the SUV equivalent to the C-Class. Although officially considered compact, it is considered mid-size in the US market. Under the vehicle naming scheme maintained by Mercedes-Benz, SUVs use the base name "GL", followed by the model's placement in Mercedes-Benz hierarchy. The "G" is for Geländewagen (German for off-road vehicle) and alludes to the long-running G-Class. This is followed by the letter "L" that acts as a linkage with the letter "C" to signify that the vehicle is a SUV equivalent to the C-Class.
  • 4.4K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Relative Direction
The most common relative directions are left, right, forward(s), backward(s), up, and down. No absolute direction corresponds to any of the relative directions. This is a consequence of the translational invariance of the laws of physics: nature, loosely speaking, behaves the same no matter what direction one moves. As demonstrated by the Michelson-Morley null result, there is no absolute inertial frame of reference. There are definite relationships between the relative directions, however. Left and right, forward and backward, and up and down are three pairs of complementary directions, each pair orthogonal to both of the others. Relative directions are also known as egocentric coordinates.
  • 4.4K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Rihla
The Rihla, formal title A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, is the travelogue written by Ibn Battuta, documenting his lifetime of travel and exploration, which according to his description covered about 70,000 miles. Rihla is the Arabic word for a journey or the travelogue that documents it.
  • 4.4K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
LCD Projector
An LCD projector is a type of video projector for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or other flat surface. It is a modern equivalent of the slide projector or overhead projector. To display images, LCD (liquid-crystal display) projectors typically send light from a metal-halide lamp through a prism or series of dichroic filters that separates light to three polysilicon panels – one each for the red, green and blue components of the video signal. As polarized light passes through the panels (combination of polarizer, LCD panel and analyzer), individual pixels can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light. The combination of open and closed pixels can produce a wide range of colors and shades in the projected image. Metal-halide lamps are used because they output an ideal color temperature and a broad spectrum of color. These lamps also have the ability to produce an extremely large amount of light within a small area; current projectors average about 2,000 to 15,000 American National Standards Institute (ANSI) lumens. Other technologies, such as Digital Light Processing (DLP) and liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) are also becoming more popular in modestly priced video projection.
  • 4.4K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Powered Hang Glider
A foot-launched powered hang glider (FLPHG), also called powered harness, nanolight, or hangmotor, is a powered hang glider harness with a motor and propeller in pusher configuration. An ordinary hang glider is used for its wing and control frame, and the pilot can foot-launch from a hill or from flat ground, needing a length of about a football field to get airborne, or much less if there is an oncoming breeze and no obstacles.
  • 4.4K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Shafa'ah
Shafa'ah (Arabic: شفاعه, "intercession"; Turkish: şefaat; Urdu: shafaat‎), in Islam is the act of pleading to God by an intimate friend of God (Muslim saint) for forgiveness. Shafa' a close meaning to Tawassul, which is the act of resorting to intimate friends of God to ask forgiveness. The word Shafa'ah is taken from shaf (شَّفْعُ) which means even as opposed to odd. The interceder, therefore, adds his own recommendation to that of petitioner so that the number of pleaders becomes even. Meaning the weak plea of the petitioner become strong by the prestige of the intercessor. Accordingly, Shafa'ah is a form of prayer to request God by the sake of those who are near to Him in order that as a member of the believing community one could hope for the intercession of the intercessors and hence deliverance from eternal damnation though not necessarily from temporary one. Shafa'ah has lately come to be among the most controversial concepts within Islamic thought. This is because some verses of the Quran negate it, if taken into consideration alone, stating that no intercession would be accepted in the day of resurrection. However, some other verses confirm it declaring that only God has the right to intercede in the next life. Finally, a third kind of verses state that some people have the authority to intercede by permission of God. Wahhabies, taking the first two kinds of these verses as true, believe that there is no intercessor but Allah, and say that whoever believes in intercession of anyone other than God is not a Muslim, rather is a polytheist (heretic). Others believe that while intercession should not be a means of emboldening people to committing sins, it should be considered as a ray of hope which lead sinners to the right path after they have wronged themselves. Belief in the intercession of Muhammad developed after his death by both Sunnis and Shiites, however among the Shiite the idea of mediation was extended to include The Twelve Imams and other intimate friends of God too.
  • 4.4K
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Apple Fermented Products
Fermentation is a process of transforming one substance into another, carried out by microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, under certain circumstances, and which can occur under aerobic and/or anaerobic conditions.
  • 4.3K
  • 18 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Principles of Aboveground Biomass Estimation via Remote Sensing
Quantifying forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is essential for elucidating the global carbon cycle and the response of forest ecosystems to climate change.  Remote-sensing techniques have played a vital role in forest AGB estimation at different scales.
  • 4.3K
  • 15 Aug 2023
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