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Topic Review
Sex Differences in Humans
Sex differences in humans have been studied in a variety of fields. In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, the type of gonads, the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus), and the external genitalia. Genetic sex is determined solely by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. A child's presumed sex is determined at birth by observation of the external genitalia. Sex differences generally refer to traits that are sexually dimorphic. A subset of such differences is hypothesized to be a product of the evolutionary process of sexual selection.
  • 3.2K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Space Shuttle Launch Countdown
The launch of Space Shuttle missions was governed by a countdown. Two clocks were maintained, the unofficial, but sometimes mentioned, L (launch) clock represented the time remaining before the scheduled launch in real time, and the more often referred to T (test) clock included several built-in holds where additional verifications were made. Built-in holds were extended if mission parameters allowed for additional checks or to correct issues. Launches of the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station did not allow for holds to be extended due to the launch window which was limited to no more than 10 minutes due to the 90 minute orbit period of the station and speed of Earth's rotation (913.6 miles per hour (1,470.3 km/h) at the Kennedy Space Center), which puts the launch pads 1,000 miles (1,600 km) east of the station on its next orbit.
  • 3.2K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Mustard Oil Bomb
"Mustard oil bomb" is present in the order of Brassicales, including many Brassica vegetables that humans consume. Although it has beneficial value to human nutrition and health, plants evolved the mustard oil bomb for their defense. Glucosinolates and myrosinases are the key components of the bomb. In this brief entry, we describe the building-blocks of the mustard oil bomb and how it functions in plant defense against pathogens and insects.
  • 3.2K
  • 19 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Hydrogen Economy
Environmental issues make the quest for better and cleaner energy sources a priority. Worldwide, researchers and companies are continuously working on this matter, taking one of two approaches: either finding new energy sources or improving the efficiency of existing ones. Hydrogen is a well-known energy carrier due to its high energy content, but a somewhat elusive one for being a gas with low molecular weight. The so-called "Hydrogen Economy" is based on the use of hydrogen as an energy source. This entry examines the current electrolysis processes for obtaining hydrogen, with an emphasis on alkaline water electrolysis.
  • 3.2K
  • 18 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Privatization in Australia
Privatization in Australia is the process of transiting a public service or good to the private sector through a variety of mechanisms that was commenced by the Federal Government in the 1990s, receiving bipartisan support. More generally, privatization is a set of economic policies that is part of a broader system of deregulation of government services, underpinned by the ideology of neoliberalism, in order to achieve economic outcomes of growth, efficiency and productivity. Some examples of sectors that have been privatized include finance, telecommunications and infrastructure. Australia's public service has also transformed with the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) in the late twentieth century which altered public administration models to appear more "business-like" through performance evaluations that emphasize efficiency, productivity and service delivery. Another definition of privatization is reliance on "more on private institutions and less on government, to satisfy people’s needs”. The concept of privatization can be construed in a narrow or broad sense. The narrow scope of privatization is portrayed as the sale of public goods, while the broader understanding of privatization involves the transfer of "ownership, management, finance and control" of public goods to private actors. Historically, the Australian government played an influential role in society as the idea of a strong state was prevalent to the Australian story since Federation. This changed in the twentieth-century, as Australia’s adoption of privatization as a set of government policies, reflected the rise of privatization across the Western world, specifically in the United States and United Kingdom. The Australian experience of privatization involves substituting government ownership, provision and funding to the private sector, in an attempt to liberalize the economy. The effectiveness of such policies is contested, as the motivations of privatization are widely debated.
  • 3.2K
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Cold War (General Term)
A cold war is a state of conflict between nations that does not involve direct military action but is pursued primarily through economic and political actions, propaganda, acts of espionage or proxy wars waged by surrogates. This term is most commonly used to refer to the American-Soviet Cold War of 1947–1991. The surrogates are typically states that are satellites of the conflicting nations, i.e., nations allied to them or under their political influence. Opponents in a cold war will often provide economic or military aid, such as weapons, tactical support or military advisors, to lesser nations involved in conflicts with the opposing country.
  • 3.2K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Biography
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006)[1] was an United States social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement,[2] Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning, within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics
  • 3.2K
  • 30 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Anthocyanins
Anthocyanins are biologically active water-soluble plant pigments that are responsible for blue, purple, and red colors in various plant parts—especially in fruits and blooms. Anthocyanins have attracted attention as natural food colorants to be used in yogurts, juices, marmalades, and bakery products. Numerous studies have also indicated the beneficial health effects of anthocyanins and their metabolites on humans, including free-radical scavenging and antioxidant activity.
  • 3.2K
  • 23 Sep 2020
Topic Review
Quantum Reinforcement Learning
Quantum machine learning has emerged as a promising paradigm that could accelerate machine learning calculations. Inside this field, quantum reinforcement learning aims at designing and building quantum agents that may exchange information with their environment and adapt to it, with the aim of achieving some goal. Different quantum platforms have been considered for quantum machine learning and specifically for quantum reinforcement learning. Here, we review the field of quantum reinforcement learning and its implementation with quantum platforms. This quantum technology may enhance quantum computation and communication, as well as machine learning, via the fruitful marriage between these previously unrelated fields. 
  • 3.2K
  • 03 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Grid Code Requirements in Ethiopia
Rapid integration of renewable energy into the electric grid has ramifications for grid management and planning. Therefore, system operators have formulated grid code requirements to ensure that the grid continues to operate in a secure, safe, and cost-effective manner. The current state of grid code in Ethiopia, as well as the need for it, is discussed here. It lays out the technological grid integration requirements, with a focus on small and microgrids, which are especially important for the integration of renewable. 
  • 3.2K
  • 08 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime. The term is most often used to describe the cooperation of civilians with the occupying Axis Powers, especially Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, during World War II. Motivations for collaboration by citizens and organizations included nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism, antisemitism, opportunism, self-defense, or often a combination of these factors. Some collaborators in World War II committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, or atrocities such as the Holocaust. More often collaborators simply "went along to get along," attempting to benefit from the occupation or simply survive. The definition of collaborationism is imprecise and subject to interpretation. Stanley Hoffmann subdivided collaboration into involuntary (reluctant recognition of necessity) and voluntary (an attempt to exploit necessity). According to him, collaborationism can be either servile or ideological. Servile is service to an enemy based on necessity for personal survival or comfort, whereas ideological is advocacy for cooperation with an enemy power. In contrast, Bertram Gordon used the terms "collaborator" and "collaborationist" for non-ideological and ideological collaborations, respectively. James Mace Ward has asserted that, while collaboration is often equated with treason, there was "legitimate collaboration" between civilian internees (mostly Americans) in the Philippines and their Japanese captors for mutual benefit and to enhance the possibilities of the internees to survive. Collaboration with the Axis Powers in Europe and Asia existed in varying degrees in all the occupied countries. Although the United Kingdom and the United States were never occupied, a British dependency, the Channel Islands near France, was under German occupation and thousands of American civilians in Asia were interned by Japan. With the defeat of the Axis, collaborators were often punished by public humiliation, imprisonment, and execution. In France, 10,500 collaborators are estimated to have been executed, some after legal proceedings, others extrajudicially. The opposite of collaborationism in World War II was "resistance", a term which also has a broad range of meaning and interpretations.
  • 3.2K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Tumor Spheroids and Organoids
Understanding and investigating tumors is carried out by researchers using a number of different methods. One exciting and promising area is 3D tumor models including spheriod and organoid models. They act in similar ways to tumors which means we can use them to gather important information. This ranges from the way tumors react through to how different treatments may work on tumors. Ultimately they may help guide us towards the types of drugs and therapies that could be used to treat tumors. This work gives an overview of these technologies, the types of 3D models available and how they can be used to improve treatments and their applications in personalized medicine. 
  • 3.2K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
MAPK/ERK Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Diseases
The signaling pathway of the microtubule-associated protein kinase or extracellular regulated kinase (MAPK/ERK) is a common mechanism of extracellular information transduction from extracellular stimuli to the intracellular space. The transduction of information leads to changes in the ongoing metabolic pathways and the modification of gene expression patterns. In the central nervous system, ERK is expressed ubiquitously, both temporally and spatially. The MAP-ERK pathway is a key element of the neuroinflammatory pathway triggered by glial cells during the development of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, as well as prionic diseases. The process triggered by MAPK/ERK activation depends on the stage of development (mature or senescence), the type of cellular element in which the pathway is activated, and the anatomic neural structure. However, extensive gaps exist with regards to the targets of the phosphorylated ERK in many of these processes.
  • 3.2K
  • 31 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Duck
Duck is the common name for numerous species in the waterfowl family Anatidae which also includes swans and geese. Ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the family Anatidae; they do not represent a monophyletic group (the group of all descendants of a single common ancestral species) but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered ducks. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than the swans and geese, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water. Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules and coots.
  • 3.2K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Digital Twins for Additive Manufacturing
A brief state-of-the-art  introduction of digital twins for additive manufacturing.
  • 3.2K
  • 17 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Moz (Marketing Software)
Moz is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Seattle that sells inbound marketing and marketing analytics software subscriptions. It was founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004 as a consulting firm and shifted to SEO software development in 2008. The company hosts a website that includes an online community of more than one million globally based digital marketers and marketing related tools. Moz offers SEO tools that includes keyword research, link building, site audits, and page optimization insights in order to help companies to have a better view of the position they have on search engines and how to improve their ranking. The company also developed the most commonly used algorithm to determine Domain Authority, which is a score between 1-100, that is often used by many SEO companies to estimate a website's overall viability with the search engines.
  • 3.2K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Post-Truth
Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for "the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth" and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth". Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry. The term garnered widespread popularity, in the form of "post-truth politics", in the period around the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". While the term post-truth is relatively recent, the concept can be traced back to earlier moral, epistemic, and political debates about relativism, postmodernity, and mendacity in politics, including nontruthfulness, lies, deception, and deliberate falsehood.
  • 3.2K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Project-Based Learning in the English Language
Project-Based Learning (PBL), or Problem-Based Learning, is a pedagogical strategy that has cultivated an interest in reading and enhancing English language comprehension. This approach is founded on the premise that students acquire knowledge and skills most effectively when engaged in meaningful and practical projects, as opposed to mere rote memorization.
  • 3.2K
  • 19 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Impact of Strategy Change on Business Process Management
In the pursuit of economic survival in the current competitive conditions with the aim of long-term prosperity and sustainability in the market, many companies today approach significant strategic changes in the management of their business. The design of a systematic procedure for implementing strategy changes into internal business processes for a project-oriented production type of organization is of importance. 
  • 3.1K
  • 14 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Integrated Management
Integrated management is a socially defined concept that is interpreted and understood in a variety of ways.
  • 3.1K
  • 29 Nov 2022
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