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Topic Review
2015–16 Stock Market Selloff
The 2015–16 stock market selloff, also known as The Great Fall of China, was the period of decline in the value of stock prices globally that occurred between June 2015 to June 2016. It included the 2015–16 Chinese stock market turbulence, in which the SSE Composite Index fell 43% in just over 2 months between June 2015 and August 2015, which culminated in the devaluation of the yuan. Investors sold shares globally as a result of slowing growth in the GDP of China, a fall in petroleum prices, the Greek debt default in June 2015, the effects of the end of quantitative easing in the United States in October 2014, a sharp rise in bond yields in early 2016, and finally, in June 2016, the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, in which Brexit was voted upon. By July 2016, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) recovered and achieved record highs. The FTSE 100 Index did not do so until later in 2016.
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  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Solar Symbol
A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun. Common solar symbols include circles (with or without rays), crosses, and spirals. In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are often indicated by means of a halo or a radiate crown. When the systematic study of comparative mythology first became popular in the 19th century, scholarly opinion tended to over-interpret historical myths and iconography in terms of "solar symbolism". This was especially the case with Max Müller and his followers beginning in the 1860s in the context of Indo-European studies. Many "solar symbols" claimed in the 19th century, such as the swastika, triskele, Sun cross, etc. have tended to be interpreted more conservatively in scholarship since the later 20th century.
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Social Presence Theory
Social presence theory explores how the "sense of being with another" is influenced by digital interfaces in human-computer interactions. Developed from the foundations of interpersonal communication and symbolic interactionism, social presence theory was first formally introduced by John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie in The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. Research on social presence theory has recently developed to examine the efficacy of telecommunications media, including SNS communications. The theory notes that computer-based communication is lower in social presence than face-to-face communication, but different computer-based communications can affect the levels of social presence between communicators and receivers.
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  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Drag Polar
The drag polar or drag curve is the relationship between the lift on an aircraft and its drag, expressed in terms of the dependence of the drag coefficient on the lift coefficient. It may be described by an equation or displayed in a diagram called a polar plot.
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  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Vocaloid
Vocaloid is a singing voice synthesizer and the first engine released in the Vocaloid series. It was succeeded by Vocaloid 2. This version was made to be able to sing both English and Japanese.
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  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Religious Cosmology
Religious cosmology is an explanation of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe, from a religious perspective. This may include beliefs on origin in the form of a creation myth, subsequent evolution, current organizational form and nature, and eventual fate or destiny. There are various traditions in religion or religious mythology asserting how and why everything is the way it is and the significance of it all. Religious cosmologies describe the spatial lay-out of the universe in terms of the world in which people typically dwell as well as other dimensions, such as the seven dimensions of religion; these are ritual, experiential and emotional, narrative and mythical, doctrinal, ethical, social, and material. Religious mythologies may include descriptions of an act or process of creation by a creator deity or a larger pantheon of deities, explanations of the transformation of chaos into order, or the assertion that existence is a matter of endless cyclical transformations. Religious cosmology differs from a strictly scientific cosmology informed by the results of the study of astronomy and similar fields, and may differ in conceptualizations of the world's physical structure and place in the universe, its creation, and forecasts or predictions on its future. The scope of religious cosmology is more inclusive than a strictly scientific cosmology (physical cosmology) in that religious cosmology is not limited to experiential observation, testing of hypotheses, and proposals of theories; for example, religious cosmology may explain why everything is the way it is or seems to be the way it is and prescribing what humans should do in context. Variations in religious cosmology include those such as from India Buddhism, Hindu, and Jain; the religious beliefs of China, Chinese Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, Japan's Shintoisim and the beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religious cosmologies have often developed into the formal logics of metaphysical systems, such as Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Kabbalah, Wuxing or the great chain of being.
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  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Chief Justice of Pakistan
The chief justice of Pakistan (Urdu: منصف اعظم پاکستان) (initials as CJP) is the head of the court system of Pakistan (the judicature branch of government) and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The officeholder is the senior most of 17 senior justices of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The Federal Court of Pakistan was established by Governor-General Jinnah's Order in February 1948. Until 1956, the chief justice and senior justices were known by the title of 'Federal Judge', and the Federal Court of Pakistan operated out of a wing of the Lahore High Court, despite the federal capital's location in Karachi. The enactment of Pakistan's first constitution in March 1956 redesigned it as the 'Supreme Court of Pakistan.' The chief justice is the chief administrative officer of the country's court system and the highest judicial officer, ranking immediately above the chief justice of the Federal Shariat Court, and is responsible for supervising federal judicial policies, and conducting judicial business in the Supreme Court. Nomination for the appointment of the chief justice is made by the prime minister of Pakistan, and final appointments are confirmed by the president of Pakistan. Presiding over the oral arguments before the court, the chief justice has significant agenda-setting power over meetings of the Supreme Court. In modern tradition[clarification needed], the chief justice has the ceremonial duty of administering the oath of office of the president of Pakistan. The first chief justice was Sir Abdul Rashid. The current chief justice is Umar Ata Bandial; incumbent since 2 February 2022.
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  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Telegram (Service)
Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging and voice over IP service developed by Telegram Messenger LLP, a privately held company registered in London, United Kingdom , founded by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov. Telegram client apps are available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows NT, macOS and Linux. Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type. Telegram's client-side code is open-source software but the source code for recent versions is not always immediately published, whereas its server-side code is closed-source and proprietary. The service also provides APIs to independent developers. In March 2018, Telegram stated that it had 200 million monthly active users. According to its CEO, (As of April 2017), Telegram’s annual growth rate was greater than 50%. Messages and media in Telegram are only client-server encrypted and stored on the servers by default. The service provides end-to-end encryption for voice calls, and optional end-to-end encrypted "secret" chats between two online users, yet not for groups or channels. Telegram's security model has received notable criticism by cryptography experts. They criticized the general security model of permanently storing all contacts, messages and media together with their decryption keys on its servers by default and by not enabling end-to-end encryption for messages by default. Pavel Durov has argued that this is because it helps to avoid third-party unsecure backups, and to allow users to access messages and files from any device. Cryptography experts have furthermore criticized Telegram's use of a custom-designed encryption protocol that has not been proven reliable and secure. Telegram has faced censorship or outright bans in some countries over accusations that the app's services have been used to facilitate illegal activities, such as protests and terrorism, as well as declining demands to facilitate government access to user data and communications.
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  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Marriageable Age
Marriageable age (or marriage age) is the minimum age at which a person is allowed by law to marry, either as a right or subject to parental, judicial or other forms of approval. Age and other prerequisites to marriage vary between jurisdictions, but in the vast majority of jurisdictions, the marriage age as a right is set at the age of majority. Nevertheless, most jurisdictions allow marriage at a younger age with parental or judicial approval, and some also allow younger people to marry if the female is pregnant. Until recently, the marriageable age for girls was lower in many jurisdictions than for boys, on the premise that girls mature at an earlier age than boys. This law has been viewed to be discriminatory, so that in many countries the marriageable age of girls has been raised to equal that of boys. That age is most commonly 18, but there are variations, some higher and some lower. The marriageable age should not be confused with the age of maturity or the age of consent, though, they may be the same in many places. In many developing countries, the official age prescriptions stand as mere guidelines. International organizations, such as UNICEF, regard a marriage by a person below the age of 18 as a child marriage and a violation of human rights. The 55 parties to the 1962 Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages have agreed to specify a minimum marriage age by statute law‚ to override customary, religious, and tribal laws and traditions. When the marriageable age under a law of a religious community is lower than that under the law of the land, the state law prevails. However, some religious communities do not accept the supremacy of state law in this respect, which may lead to child marriage or forced marriage. The 123 parties to the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery have agreed to adopt a prescribed “suitable” minimum age for marriage.
  • 14.6K
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Bible Belt
The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States in which socially conservative Protestant Christianity plays a strong role in society and politics, and church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. The region contrasts with the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes, and the Mormon corridor in Utah and southern Idaho. Whereas the states with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious are in the West and New England regions of the United States (with Vermont at 37%, ranking the highest), in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 12%, and Tennessee has the highest proportion of evangelical Protestants, at 52%. The evangelical influence is strongest in northern Georgia, Tennessee , Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, southern and western Virginia, West Virginia, the Upstate region of South Carolina, and East Texas . The earliest known usage of the term "Bible Belt" was by American journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken, who in 1924 wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune: "The old game, I suspect, is beginning to play out in the Bible Belt." In 1927, Mencken claimed the term as his invention. The term is now also used in other countries for regions with higher religious doctrine adoption.
  • 14.6K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Environmental Risk Factors
Environmental health is a growing area of knowledge, continually increasing and updating the body of evidence linking the environment to human health.
  • 14.6K
  • 03 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Protection Motivation Theory
Protection motivation theory (PMT) was originally created to help understand individual human responses to fear appeals. Protection motivation theory proposes that people protect themselves based on two factors: threat appraisal and coping appraisal. Threat appraisal assesses the severity of the situation and examines how serious the situation is, while coping appraisal is how one responds to the situation. Threat appraisal consists of the perceived severity of a threatening event and the perceived probability of the occurrence, or vulnerability. Coping appraisal consists of perceived response efficacy, or an individual's expectation that carrying out the recommended action will remove the threat, and perceived self efficacy, or the belief in one's ability to execute the recommended courses of action successfully. PMT is one model that explains why people engage in unhealthy practices and offers suggestions for changing those behaviors. It is educational and motivational. Primary prevention: taking measures to combat the risk of developing a health problem. (e.g., controlling weight to prevent high blood pressure). Secondary prevention: taking steps to prevent a condition from becoming worse. (e.g., remembering to take daily medication to control blood pressure). Another psychological model that describes self-preservation and processing of fear is terror management theory.
  • 14.5K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
History of Wind Power
Wind power has been used as long as humans have put sails into the wind. For more than two millennia wind-powered machines have ground grain and pumped water. Wind power was widely available and not confined to the banks of fast-flowing streams, or later, requiring sources of fuel. Wind-powered pumps drained the polders of the Netherlands, and in arid regions such as the American mid-west or the Australian outback, wind pumps provided water for livestock and steam engines. With the development of electric power, wind power found new applications in lighting buildings remote from centrally-generated power. Throughout the 20th century parallel paths developed small wind plants suitable for farms or residences, and larger utility-scale wind generators that could be connected to electricity grids for remote use of power. Today wind-powered generators operate in every size range between tiny plants for battery charging at isolated residences, up to near-gigawatt sized offshore wind farms that provide electricity to national electrical networks. By 2014, over 240,000 commercial-sized wind turbines were operating in the world, producing 4% of the world's electricity.
  • 14.5K
  • 02 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Islands of Australia
This is a list of selected Australian islands grouped by State or Territory. Australia has 8,222 islands within its maritime borders.
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  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Fedora Version History
Fedora is a popular Linux distribution developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and is sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora attempts to maintain a six-month release schedule, offering new versions in May and November, although some releases have experienced minor delays.
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  • 28 Oct 2022
Biography
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget (UK: /piˈæʒeɪ/, US: /ˌpiːəˈʒeɪ/;[1] French: [ʒɑ̃ pjaʒɛ]; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Switzerland psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the Internati
  • 14.5K
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as i386 or just 386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were the CPU of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time. As the original implementation of the 32-bit extension of the 80286 architecture, the 80386 instruction set, programming model, and binary encodings are still the common denominator for all 32-bit x86 processors, which is termed the i386-architecture, x86, or IA-32, depending on context. The 32-bit 80386 can correctly execute most code intended for the earlier 16-bit processors such as 8086 and 80286 that were ubiquitous in early PCs. (Following the same tradition, modern 64-bit x86 processors are able to run most programs written for older x86 CPUs, all the way back to the original 16-bit 8086 of 1978.) Over the years, successively newer implementations of the same architecture have become several hundreds of times faster than the original 80386 (and thousands of times faster than the 8086). A 33 MHz 80386 was reportedly measured to operate at about 11.4 MIPS. The 80386 was introduced in October 1985, while manufacturing of the chips in significant quantities commenced in June 1986. Mainboards for 80386-based computer systems were cumbersome and expensive at first, but manufacturing was rationalized upon the 80386's mainstream adoption. The first personal computer to make use of the 80386 was designed and manufactured by Compaq and marked the first time a fundamental component in the IBM PC compatible de facto standard was updated by a company other than IBM. In May 2006, Intel announced that 80386 production would stop at the end of September 2007. Although it had long been obsolete as a personal computer CPU, Intel and others had continued making the chip for embedded systems. Such systems using an 80386 or one of many derivatives are common in aerospace technology and electronic musical instruments, among others. Some mobile phones also used (later fully static CMOS variants of) the 80386 processor, such as BlackBerry 950 and Nokia 9000 Communicator. Linux continued to support 80386 processors until December 11, 2012; when the kernel cut 386-specific instructions in version 3.8.
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  • 23 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Misogyny in Horror Films
Misogyny can occur in horror films when there is a degrading representation of women. This is found particularly in slasher films, where there is often gendered specific violence towards women. Female characters experience violence and brutality at the hands of male antagonists far more often than male characters in these films. Female characters are likely to experience sexual violence, particularly in the rape-and-revenge subgenre.
  • 14.4K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Armenia
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Eastern Europe. Due to its location in the South Caucasus, Armenia is sometimes described as transcontinental, spanning both Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the Lachin corridor (under a Russian peacekeeping force) and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital and largest city. Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. The first Armenian state of Urartu was established in 860 BC, and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and in the year 301 became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century. Under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the kingdom fell in 1045 and Armenia was soon after invaded by the Seljuk Turks. An Armenian principality and later a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under the rule of the Ottoman and Persian empires, repeatedly ruled by either of the two over the centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, while most of the western parts of the traditional Armenian homeland remained under Ottoman rule. During World War I, 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian genocide. In 1918, following the Russian Revolution, all non-Russian countries declared their independence after the Russian Empire ceased to exist, leading to the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and in 1922 became a founding member of the Soviet Union. In 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Armenia is a developing country and ranks 81st on the Human Development Index (2018). Its economy is primarily based on industrial output and mineral extraction. While Armenia is geographically located in the South Caucasus, it is generally considered geopolitically European. Since Armenia aligns itself in many respects geopolitically with Europe, the country is a member of numerous European organizations including the Council of Europe, the Eastern Partnership, Eurocontrol, the Assembly of European Regions, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Armenia is also a member of certain regional groups throughout Eurasia, including the Asian Development Bank, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Union, and the Eurasian Development Bank. Armenia supports the de facto independent Artsakh, which was proclaimed in 1991. Armenia also recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, as the country's primary religious establishment. The unique Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD.
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  • 10 May 2023
Topic Review
Oceanic Climate
An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate or temperate oceanic climate, is the Köppen classification of climate typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, and generally features cool summers (relative to their latitude) and cool but not cold winters, with a relatively narrow annual temperature range and few extremes of temperature. Oceanic climates are defined as having a monthly mean temperature below 22 °C (72 °F) in the warmest month, and above 0 °C (32 °F) (or −3 °C (27 °F) in the coldest month). This climate type is often caused by the onshore flow from the cool, high latitude oceans that are found west of their location. It typically lacks a dry season, as precipitation is more evenly dispersed throughout the year. It is the predominant climate type across much of Western Europe, United Kingdom , New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada, far southwestern South America, a narrow zone of southeastern Australia including Tasmania, and isolated locations elsewhere. Oceanic climates are generally characterised by a narrower annual range of temperatures than in other places at a comparable latitude, and generally do not have the extremely dry summers of Mediterranean climates or the hot and wet summers of humid subtropical climates. Oceanic climates are most dominant in Europe, where they spread much farther inland than in other continents. Oceanic climates can have considerable storm activity as they are located in the belt of the stormy westerlies. Many oceanic climates have frequent cloudy or overcast conditions due to the near constant storms and lows tracking over or near them. The annual range of temperatures is smaller than typical climates at these latitudes due to the constant stable marine air masses that pass through oceanic climates, which lack both very warm and very cool fronts.
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  • 29 Nov 2022
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