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Topic Review
Chemical Modifications of Aptamers
Aptamers are short single-stranded RNA or DNA oligonucleotides capable of folding into complex 3D structures, enabling them to bind to a large variety of targets ranging from small ions to an entire organism. Their high binding specificity and affinity make them comparable to antibodies, but they are superior regarding a longer shelf life, simple production and chemical modification, in addition to low toxicity and immunogenicity.
  • 3.3K
  • 03 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Opportunities and Challenges in Developing Ocean Energy Sources
The optimal utilization of renewable energies is a crucial factor toward the realization of sustainability and zero carbon in a future energy system. Tidal currents, waves, and thermal and salinity gradients in the ocean are excellent renewable energy sources. Ocean tidal, osmotic, wave, and thermal energy sources have yearly potentials that exceed the global power demand of 22,848 TWh/y. It is expected that a better insight into ocean energy and a deep understanding of various potential devices can lead to a broader adoption of ocean energy. It is also clear that further research into control strategies is needed. Policy makers should provide financial support for technologies in the demonstration stage and employ road mapping to accelerate the cost and risk reductions to overcome economic hurdles. 
  • 3.3K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Inflorescence Meristem in Cereal Crops
Flowering plants develop new organs throughout their life cycle. The vegetative shoot apical meristem (SAM) generates leaf whorls, branches and stems, whereas the reproductive SAM, called the inflorescence meristem (IM), forms florets arranged on a stem or an axis. In cereal crops, the inflorescence producing grains from fertilized florets makes the major yield contribution, which is determined by the numbers and structures of branches, spikelets and florets within the inflorescence. The developmental progression largely depends on the activity of IM. The proper regulations of IM size, specification and termination are outcomes of complex interactions between promoting and restricting factors/signals. 
  • 3.3K
  • 14 May 2021
Topic Review
Geiger-Marsden Experiments
The Geiger–Marsden experiments (also called the Rutherford gold foil experiment) were a landmark series of experiments by which scientists learned that every atom has a nucleus where all of its positive charge and most of its mass is concentrated. They deduced this after measuring how an alpha particle beam is scattered when it strikes a thin metal foil. The experiments were performed between 1908 and 1913 by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under the direction of Ernest Rutherford at the Physical Laboratories of the University of Manchester.
  • 3.3K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Bile Acids in the Liver and Gut Metabolism
Bile acids (BAs) represent heterogeneous amphipathic molecules that have both polar (water-soluble or hydrophilic) and apolar (water-insoluble or hydrophobic) parts, and therefore they can dissolve in water as well as in fat. The regulation of cholesterol homeostasis remains their main role in the host. The better water solubility in comparison with their precursor promotes cholesterol removal from the human body. The proper bile ratio of BAs and cholesterol prevents cholesterol precipitation and further formation of gallstones; therefore, the loss of BAs increases the risk of cholesterol stone development.
  • 3.3K
  • 08 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Prediction of Water Quality Classification using Machine Learning
Machine Learning (ML) has been used for a long time and has gained wide attention over the last several years. It can handle a large amount of data and allow non-linear structures by using complex mathematical computations. However, traditional ML models do suffer some problems, such as high bias and overfitting. Therefore, this has resulted in the advancement and improvement of ML techniques, such as the bagging and boosting approach, to address these problems.
  • 3.3K
  • 21 Jun 2022
Topic Review
China’s Inclusive Education Legislation, Law, and Policy
Laws and policies, no matter how well designed, can fail if they are not implemented correctly. This can occur when there is no interaction between policymakers and those who are working on the ground.
  • 3.3K
  • 30 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Form of Action
The forms of action were the different procedures by which a legal claim could be made during much of the history of the English common law. Depending on the court, a plaintiff would purchase a writ in Chancery (or file a bill) which would set in motion a series of events eventually leading to a trial in one of the medieval common law courts. Each writ entailed a different set of procedures and remedies which together amounted to the "form of action". The forms of action were abolished during the 19th century, but they have left an indelible mark on the law. In the early Middle Ages, the focus was on the procedure that was employed to bring one's claim to the royal courts of King's Bench or Common Pleas: it was the form of one's action, not its substance, which occupied legal discussion. This restrictive approach is one of the reasons which attracted litigants to petition the King directly, which eventually led to the development of a separate court known as the Court of Chancery, from which the body of law known as equity derives. Modern English law, as in most other legal systems, now looks to substance rather than to form: a claimant need only demonstrate that he or she has a valid cause of action.
  • 3.3K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Electricity Tariffs and Solutions for Optimal Energy Management
Today, electricity tariffs play an essential role in the electricity retail market as they are the key factor for the decision-making of end-users. Additionally, tariffs are necessary for increasing competition in the electricity market. They have a great impact on load energy management. Moreover, tariffs are not taken as a fixed approach to expense calculations only but are influenced by many other factors, such as electricity generation, transmission, distribution costs, and governmental taxation. Thus, electricity pricing differs significantly between countries or between regions within a country. Improper tariff calculation methodologies in some areas have led to high-power losses, unnecessary investments, increased operational expenses, and environmental pollution due to the non-use of available sustainable energy resources.
  • 3.3K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Samsung Knox
Samsung Knox is a proprietary security and management framework pre-installed on most Samsung mobile devices. Its primary purpose is to provide organizations with a toolset for managing work devices, such as employee mobile phones or interactive kiosks. Knox provides more granular control over the standard work profile to manage capabilities found only on Samsung devices. Knox's features fall within three categories: data security, device manageability, and VPN capability. Knox also provides web-based services for organizations to manage their devices. Organizations can customize their managed mobile devices by configuring various functions, including pre-loaded applications, settings, boot-up animations, home screens, and lock screens. As of December 2020, organizations can use specific Samsung mobile device cameras as barcode scanners, using Knox services to capture and analyze the data.
  • 3.3K
  • 17 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Antimony as a Critical Raw Material
Antimony is widely acknowledged as a critical raw material of worldwide significance, based on its recognition by many countries. According to current projections, there is an anticipated increase in the demand for antimony in the forthcoming years. An issue of significant concern within the supply chain, which poses a substantial obstacle to sustainable development, is the global unequal allocation of abundant antimony resources. Most nations exhibited a high degree of dependence on a few countries for their net imports of antimony, resulting in a notable disruption and raising concerns regarding the supply chain. 
  • 3.3K
  • 23 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Triboelectric Nanogenerator
First proposed by Wang in 2012, the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG, also called Wang generator) derived from Maxwell’s displacement current shows great prospect as a new technology to convert mechanical energy into electricity, based on the triboelectrification effect and electrostatic induction. TENGs present superiorities including light weight, cost-effectiveness, easy fabrication, and versatile material choices. The concept of harvesting blue energy using the TENG and its network was first brought out in 2014. As a new form of blue energy harvester, the TENG surpasses the EMG in that it intrinsically displays higher effectiveness under low frequency, owing to the unique feature of its output characteristics. Moreover, adopting the distributed architecture of light-weighted TENG networks can make it more suitable for collecting wave energy of high entropy compared with EMGs, which are oversized in volume and mass.
  • 3.3K
  • 13 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is responsible for a large part of many health benefits associated with Mediterranean diet as it is a fundamental ingredient of this diet. The peculiarities of this golden highly valued product are in part due to the requirements that must be met to achieve this title, namely, it has to be obtained using exclusively mechanical procedures, its free acidity cannot be greater than 0.8%, it must not show sensory defects and it has to possess a fruity taste. All these characteristics are key factors to EVOO quality, thus the chemical composition of these many health-promoting compounds, such as unsaturated fatty acids (which are also the major compounds, especially oleic acid), as well as minor components such as tocopherols or phenolic compounds (which behave as natural antioxidants) must be preserved. Due to the presence of all these compounds, the daily consumption of EVOO entails health benefits such as cardioprotective, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor properties or acting as regulators of the intestinal microbiota, among others. Taking all together, conserving EVOO chemical composition is essential to preserve its properties, so it is worth to control certain factors during storage like exposure to light, temperature, oxygen presence or the chosen packaging material, to maintain its quality and extend its shelf-life until its consumption.
  • 3.3K
  • 05 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Mechanical Milling
Mechanical milling (MM) has attracted great attention as a powerful tool for the synthesis of a variety of sophisticated materials, including equilibrium, nonequilibrium (e.g., amorphous, quasicrystals, nanodiamonds, carbon nanotubes, nanocrystalline powders), and nanocomposite materials. The MM is a unique process in that it involves a solid-state interaction between the reactant materials’ fresh powder surfaces at room temperature. As a result, it has been used to fabricate alloys and compounds that are difficult or impossible to acquire using standard melting and casting processes.
  • 3.3K
  • 20 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Geopolitical Risk
Geopolitical risk (GPR) is defined as the risk associated with terror threats, war threats, nuclear threats and military build-ups between states or countries that disrupt the usual, peaceful conduct of international affairs.
  • 3.3K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Inclusive Fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964. An individual's own child, who carries one half of the individual's genes, is defined as one offspring equivalent. A sibling's child, who will carry one-quarter of the individual's genes, is 1/2 offspring equivalent. Similarly, a cousin's child, who has 1/16 of the individual's genes, is 1/8 offspring equivalent. From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Prior to Hamilton's work, it was generally assumed that genes only achieved this through the number of viable offspring produced by the individual organism they occupied. However, this overlooked a wider consideration of a gene's success, most clearly in the case of the social insects where the vast majority of individuals do not produce (their own) offspring.
  • 3.3K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Datura Species
Datura, a genus of medicinal herb from the Solanaceae family, is credited with toxic as well as medicinal properties. The different plant parts of Datura sp., mainly D. stramonium L., commonly known as Datura or Jimson Weed, exhibit potent analgesic, antiviral, anti-diarrheal, and anti-inflammatory activities, owing to the wide range of bioactive constituents. With these pharmacological activities, D. stramonium is potentially used to treat numerous human diseases, including ulcers, inflammation, wounds, rheumatism, gout, bruises and swellings, sciatica, fever, toothache, asthma, and bronchitis. The primary phytochemicals investigation on plant extract of Datura showed alkaloids, carbohydrates, cardiac glycosides, tannins, flavonoids, amino acids, and phenolic compounds. It also contains toxic tropane alkaloids, including atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscamine. Although some studies on D. stramonium have reported potential pharmacological effects, information about the toxicity remains almost uncertain. Moreover, the frequent abuse of D. stramonium for recreational purposes has led to toxic syndromes. Therefore, it becomes necessary to be aware of the toxic aspects and the potential risks accompanying its use.
  • 3.3K
  • 25 Apr 2022
Topic Review
FreeNAS
FreeNAS is a free and open-source network-attached storage (NAS) operating system based on FreeBSD and the OpenZFS file system. It is licensed under the terms of the BSD License and runs on commodity x86-64 hardware. FreeNAS supports Windows, macOS and Unix clients and various virtualization hosts such as XenServer and VMware using the SMB, AFP, NFS, iSCSI, SSH, rsync and FTP/TFTP protocols. Advanced FreeNAS features include full-disk encryption and a plug-in architecture for third-party software.
  • 3.3K
  • 27 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Neutrophil and Natural Killer Cell Interactions in Cancers
Neutrophils are the most abundant circulating leukocytes, accounting for 50–70% of blood cells. Natural killer (NK) cells are large granular lymphocytes from innate immunity, participating in virus-infected and malignant-transformed cells recognition and elimination.
  • 3.3K
  • 29 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Attention-Setting and Human Mental Function: An Introduction
Adapted from the longer article  [url link to original article] This entry provides an introduction to experimental research on top-down human attention in complex scenes, written for cognitive scientists in general. The entry emphasizes effects of human goals and intention on mental function, measured with behavioral experiments. Top-down attention is described as attention-setting — an open category of skillful mental actions that initiate particular task sets, which are assembled from a wide range of mental processes. Experimental research on visual search, task switching, and temporal attention is outlined and extended to the important human time scale of seconds.
  • 3.3K
  • 21 Jun 2022
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