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Topic Review
Murano Glass
Murano glass is made on the Venetian island of Murano, which has been a glassmaking center for over 700 years. It is also sometimes referred to as Venetian glass. Today Murano is known for its art glass, but it has a long history of innovations in glassmaking in addition to its artistic fame—and was Europe's first major glassmaking center. During the 1400s, Murano glassmakers created cristallo—which was almost transparent and considered the finest glass in the world. Murano glassmakers also developed a white-colored glass (milk glass called lattimo) that looked like porcelain. They later became Europe's finest makers of mirrors. Originally, Venice was controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire, but it eventually became an independent city state. It flourished as a trading center and seaport. Its connections with the Middle East helped its glassmakers gain additional skills, as glassmaking was more advanced in countries such as Syria and Egypt. Although Venetian glassmaking existed as far back as the 8th Century, it became concentrated in Murano by law beginning 1291. Since glass factories often caught fire, this removed much of the possibility of a major fire disaster for the city. Murano glassmakers developed secret recipes and methods for making glass, and the concentration of Venice's glassmaking on the island of Murano enabled better control of those secrets. Murano became Europe's elite glassmaking center, peaking in popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries. Venice's dominance in trade along the Mediterranean Sea created a wealthy merchant class that was a strong connoisseur of the arts. This helped establish demand for art glass and more innovations. The spread of glassmaking talent in Europe eventually diminished the importance of Venice and its Murano glassmakers. A defeat by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797, and occupation, caused more hardship for Murano's glassmaking industry. Murano glassmaking began a revival in the 1920s. Today, Murano and Venice are tourist attractions, and Murano is home to numerous glass factories and a few individual artists' studios. Its Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) in the Palazzo Giustinian contains displays on the history of glassmaking as well as glass samples ranging from Egyptian times through the present day.
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  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Water Resource Management
Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. It is an aspect of water cycle management. Water is essential for our survival. The field of water resources management will have to continue to adapt to the current and future issues facing the allocation of water. With the growing uncertainties of global climate change and the long-term impacts of past management actions, this decision-making will be even more difficult. It is likely that ongoing climate change will lead to situations that have not been encountered. As a result, alternative management strategies, including participatory approaches and adaptive capacity are increasingly being used to strengthen water decision-making. Ideally, water resource management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. As with other resource management, this is rarely possible in practice so decision-makers must prioritise issues of sustainability, equity and factor optimisation (in that order!) to achieve acceptable outcomes. One of the biggest concerns for our water-based resources in the future is the sustainability of the current and future water resource allocation. As water becomes scarce, the importance of water management grows vastly—finding a balance between humans' needs and the essential step of water resources sustainability in the environment.
  • 3.0K
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Grihastha
Grihastha (Sanskrit: gr̥hastha) literally means "being in and occupied with home, family" or "householder". It refers to the second phase of an individual's life in a four age-based stages of the Hindu ashram system. It follows celibacy (bachelor student) life stage, and embodies a married life, with the duties of maintaining a home, raising a family, educating one's children, and leading a family-centred and a dharmic social life. This stage of Ashrama is conceptually followed by Vanaprastha (forest dweller, retired) and Sannyasa (renunciation). Combined with other three life stages, Hindu philosophy considers these stages as a facet of Dharma concept, something essential to completing the full development of a human being and fulfilling all the needs of the individual and society. Ancient and medieval era texts of Hinduism consider Grihastha stage as the most important of all stages in sociological context, as human beings in this stage not only pursue a virtuous life, they produce food and wealth that sustains people in other stages of life, as well as the offspring that continues mankind. The householder stage is also considered in Indian philosophy as one where the most intense physical, sexual, emotional, occupational, social and material attachments exist in a human being's life. In Indian traditions, Grihastha stage of life is a recommendation, but not a requirement. Any Brahmacharya may, if he or she wants, skip householder and retirement stage, go straight to Sannyasa stage of life, thereby renouncing worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicating their lives to spiritual pursuits.
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  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Biogenic amines in Fish
The occurrence of biogenic amines in fish is directly associated with microorganisms with decarboxylase activity. These compounds are generally detoxified by oxidases in the intestinal tract of humans, but some conditions, such as alcohol consumption, enzyme deficiency, or monoamino-oxidase antidepressant use, can make their intake by food dangerous. Due to its toxicity, histamine is a unique biogenic amine with regulatory limits for fishery products. This review focuses on biogenic amines in fish, with a detailed picture of the number of alert notifications or intoxication events reported in the last years. The favoring conditions for their formation, as well as the main preventive and control measures to ensure public health, are also reviewed.
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  • 18 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Hybrid Drugs
Hybrid drugs, also termed “single molecule multiple targets” or “multiple ligands”, can be referred to as the most sophisticated form of combination therapy. They are designed utilizing molecular hybridization—a strategy of rational drug design which enables the fusing of one or more bioactive compounds or their pharmacophoric subunits into one molecule, which represents the preselected, desired features of original drugs. Obviously, connected entities should retain affinity to their specific targets and provide a superior therapeutic effect by amplification or exerting multifactorial biological activity. Such a single hybrid agent can modulate multiple targets involved in proliferation and efficiently destroy cancer cells.
  • 3.0K
  • 25 May 2021
Topic Review
Coffee Chlorogenic Acids Incorporation
The main CGA in coffee is 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid (5-CQA). Coffee extracts are currently the most widely used source to enhance the antioxidant activity of foods. Due to the solubility of CGAs, their extraction is mainly performed with organic solvents. CGAs have been associated with health benefits, such as antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activity, and others that reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
  • 3.0K
  • 27 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Side Lobe
In antenna engineering, side lobes or sidelobes are the lobes (local maxima) of the far field radiation pattern of an antenna or other radiation source, that are not the main lobe. The radiation pattern of most antennas shows a pattern of "lobes" at various angles, directions where the radiated signal strength reaches a maximum, separated by "nulls", angles at which the radiated signal strength falls to zero. This can be viewed as the diffraction pattern of the antenna. In a directional antenna in which the objective is to emit the radio waves in one direction, the lobe in that direction is designed to have a larger field strength than the others; this is the "main lobe". The other lobes are called "side lobes", and usually represent unwanted radiation in undesired directions. The side lobe directly behind the main lobe is called the back lobe. The longer the antenna relative to the radio wavelength, the more lobes its radiation pattern has. In transmitting antennas, excessive side lobe radiation wastes energy and may cause interference to other equipment. Another disadvantage is that confidential information may be picked up by unintended receivers. In receiving antennas, side lobes may pick up interfering signals, and increase the noise level in the receiver. The power density in the side lobes is generally much less than that in the main beam. It is generally desirable to minimize the sidelobe level (SLL), which is measured in decibels relative to the peak of the main beam. The main lobe and side lobes occur for both transmitting and receiving. The concepts of main and side lobes, radiation pattern, aperture shapes, and aperture weighting, apply to optics (another branch of electromagnetics) and in acoustics fields such as loudspeaker and sonar design, as well as antenna design. Because an antenna's far field radiation pattern is a Fourier Transform of its aperture distribution, most antennas will generally have sidelobes, unless the aperture distribution is a Gaussian, or if the antenna is so small as to have no sidelobes in the visible space. Larger antennas have narrower main beams, as well as narrower sidelobes. Hence, larger antennas have more sidelobes in the visible space (as the antenna size is increased, sidelobes move from the evanescent space to the visible space).
  • 3.0K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Hot dip galvanizing
Hot-dip galvanizing is one of the most effective methods of protecting steel against corrosion. It allows one to obtain good quality coatings, ensuring long-term protection with relatively low operating costs of the coatings.
  • 3.0K
  • 29 Oct 2020
Topic Review
DNA Circuits
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a genetic material, encodes all living information and living characteristics, e.g., in cell, DNA signaling circuits control the transcription activities of specific genes. In recent years, various DNA circuits have been developed to implement a wide range of signaling and for regulating gene network functions. In particular, a synthetic DNA circuit, with a programmable design and easy construction, has become a crucial method through which to simulate and regulate DNA signaling networks. Importantly, the construction of a hierarchical DNA circuit provides a useful tool for regulating gene networks and for processing molecular information. Moreover, via their robust and modular properties, DNA circuits can amplify weak signals and establish programmable cascade systems, which are particularly suitable for the applications of biosensing and detecting. Furthermore, a biological enzyme can also be used to provide diverse circuit regulation elements. 
  • 3.0K
  • 13 Dec 2021
Topic Review
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market (/ˈnæzˌdæk/ (listen), also known simply as Nasdaq) is an American stock exchange. It is the second-largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, behind only the New York Stock Exchange located in the same city. The exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc., which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic (formerly known as OMX) and Nasdaq Baltic stock market network and several U.S. stock and options exchanges
  • 3.0K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Assessment of Bio-Based Polyurethanes
Among numerous synthetic macromolecules, polyurethane in its different forms has proven its sheer dominance and established a reputation as a reliable and trusted material due to its proficiency in terms of superior properties, which include: high mechanical strength and abrasion resistance, good durability, good adhesion, good thermal stability, excellent chemical and weathering resistance. Synthetic polyurethane materials are non-biodegradable, poisonous, and use petrochemical-based raw materials, which are now depleting, leading to a surge in polyurethane production costs. Enormous kinds of available bio-renewable sources as predecessors for the production of polyols and isocyanates have been explored for the development of “greener” PU materials; these bio-based polyurethanes have significant potential to be used as future PU products, with a partial or total replacement of petroleum-based polyurethanes, due to increasing concern about the environment, their relatively low cost and biodegradability.
  • 3.0K
  • 12 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Original BSD License
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses. BSD is both a license and a class of license (generally referred to as BSD-like). The modified BSD license (in wide use today) is very similar to the license originally used for the BSD version of Unix. The BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code retain the BSD license notice if redistributed in source code format, or reproduce the notice if redistributed in binary format. The BSD license (unlike some other licenses e.g. GPL) does not require that source code be distributed at all.
  • 3.0K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Panama Papers (Europe)
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source. This page details related allegations, reactions, and investigations, in Europe.
  • 3.0K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Coal Fly Ash Production, Utilization in India
Coal fly ash (CFA) is one of the most burning issues in the whole world due to its large amount of production in thermal power plants. Every year a million tons (MTs) of CFA are generated globally of which almost half is utilized in various forms, while the remaining half remains unused, leading to various types of pollution.
  • 3.0K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar
High-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) is a powerful tool for atmospheric aerosol remote sensing. A ground-based high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL), operated at 532 nm wavelength, has been developed at Zhejiang University (ZJU) for aerosols and clouds studies. This lidar provides vertical profiles of aerosol scattering ratio together with lidar ratio and particle depolarization ratio at 532 nm. Determination of overlap function is a key step in the calibration of a high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) and important guarantee of data retrieval, an iterative-based general determination (IGD) method for overlap function in HSRL is proposed. The standard method to retrieve the extinction coefficient from HSRL signals depends heavily on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). An iterative image reconstruction (IIR) method is proposed for the retrieval of the aerosol extinction coefficient based on HSRL data under low SNR condition. With the optical properties, a state-of-the-art method for feature detection and classification is proposed to automatically identify the features attributed to dust/polluted dust, urban/smoke, maritime aerosols, as well as ice and liquid water cloud during day and night.
  • 3.0K
  • 22 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Lactose
Lactose is the principal sugar of mammal milk, with a few exceptions (e.g., sea lions and walruses), and is the source of nourishment for newborns. As a sugar, it has a major role as a source of energy, providing 4 kcal/g, and also having a low glycemic index.
  • 3.0K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Indoor Air Pollution in Developing Nations
Indoor air pollution in developing nations is a significant form of indoor air pollution (IAP) that is little known to those in the developed world. Three billion people in developing countries across the globe rely on biomass, in the form of wood, charcoal, dung, and crop residue, as their domestic cooking fuel. Since much of the cooking is carried out indoors in environments that lack proper ventilation, millions of people, primarily poor women and children face serious health risks. The major sources of indoor air pollution include combustion and building materials. Globally, 4.3 million deaths were attributed to exposure to IAP in developing countries in 2012, almost all in low and middle-income countries. The South East Asian and Western Pacific regions bear most of the burden with 1.69 and 1.62 million deaths, respectively. Almost 600,000 deaths occur in Africa, 200,000 in the Eastern Mediterranean region, 99,000 in Europe and 81,000 in the Americas. The remaining 19,000 deaths occur in high-income countries. Even though the rate of dependence on biomass fuel is declining, this dwindling resource will not keep up with population growth which could ultimately put environments at even greater risk. Over the past several decades, there have been numerous studies investigating the air pollution generated by traditional household solid fuel combustion for space heating, lighting, and cooking in developing countries. It is now well established that, throughout much of the developing world, indoor burning of solid fuels (biomass, coal, etc.) by inefficient, often insufficiently vented, combustion devices results in elevated exposure to household air pollutants. This is due to the poor combustion efficiency of the combustion devices and the elevated nature of the emissions. In addition, they are often released directly into living areas. Smoke from traditional household solid fuel combustion commonly contains a range of incomplete combustion products, including both fine and coarse particulate matter (e.g., PM2.5, PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and a variety of organic air pollutants (e.g., formaldehyde, 1,3-butadiene, benzene, acetaldehyde, acrolein, phenols, pyrene, benzopyrene, benzo(a)pyrene, dibenzopyrenes, dibenzocarbazoles, and cresols). In a typical solid fuel stove, about 6–20% of the solid fuel is converted into toxic emissions (by mass). The exact quantity and relative composition is determined by factors such as the fuel type and moisture content, stove type and operation influencing the amount. While many pollutants can evolve, most measurements have been focused on breathing-zone exposure levels of particulate matter (PM) and carbon monoxide (CO), which are the main products of incomplete combustion and are considered to pose the greatest health risks. Indoor PM2.5 exposure levels have been consistently reported to be in the range of hundreds to thousands of micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3). Similarly, CO exposure levels have been measured to be as high as hundreds to greater than 1000 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3). A recent study of 163 households in two rural Chinese counties reported geometric mean indoor PM2.5 concentrations of 276 μg/m3 (combinations of different plant materials, including wood, tobacco stems, and corncobs), 327 μg/m3 (wood), 144 μg/m3 (smoky coal), and 96 μg/m3 (smokeless coal) for homes using a variety of different fuel types and stove configurations (e.g., vented, unvented, portable, fire pit, mixed ventilation stove).
  • 3.0K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Reintroduction Projects of the Przewalski’s Horse
Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii), also known as Przewalski’s wild horse, the Asian wild horse, Mongolian wild horse, Takhi or Junggar Horses, is classified by the IUCN as Extinct in the Wild (EW) as no Przewalski’s horse has been seen in the wild since 1969, despite efforts to find them in Mongolia or China. The wild horse has been successfully saved from extinction by captive breeding projects outside the historic range. Although multiple studies were conducted, the main problems such as loss of founder genes, inbreeding depression, hybridization with domestic horses, high morbidity and mortality, and a lack of reliable prevention strategies and treatment limitations of these problems are still unresolved and require further scientific effort.
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  • 02 Dec 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Anthropology of Food: History, Topics, and Trajectories to Understand a Discipline
The anthropology of food is a sub-field of cultural anthropology interested in studying food and foodways. This article provides a concise overview of the anthropology of food, tracing its development from the early twentieth century to contemporary debates and emerging research trajectories. Drawing on foundational work by figures such as Boas and Malinowski, it shows how early anthropologists approached food as integral to understanding social organization, kinship, and cultural meaning. As the field evolved, structuralist, materialist, feminist, and political-economic perspectives broadened its scope, highlighting the symbolic significance of cuisine, the interplay between environment and subsistence, and the pivotal role of gender and class in shaping food practices. In recent decades, the anthropology of food has engaged intensively with globalization, investigating how transnational flows reshape culinary identities, local economies, and cultural heritage, as well as other significant topics. At the same time, emerging themes—such as multispecies perspectives, sensory studies, and the application of innovative methodologies—offer new lenses for understanding how food mediates relationships between humans, non-human beings, and environments. By examining case studies spanning regions from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, this article illustrates how contemporary anthropologists use food as a prism to investigate cultural identity, social change, ethical relations, and the complex entanglements of local and global food systems.
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  • 13 Feb 2025
Topic Review
Olmec Influences on Mesoamerican Cultures
The causes and degree of Olmec influences on Mesoamerican cultures has been a subject of debate over many decades. Although the Olmecs are considered to be perhaps the earliest Mesoamerican civilization, there are questions concerning how and how much the Olmecs influenced cultures outside the Olmec heartland. This debate is succinctly, if simplistically, framed by the title of a 2005 The New York Times article: “Mother Culture, or Only a Sister?”.
  • 3.0K
  • 14 Oct 2022
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