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Topic Review
Methods of Preparation of UHMWPE Membranes
One of the materials that attracts attention as a potential material for membrane formation is ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). The methods used to prepare membranes from semicrystalline (SC) polymers, including UHMWPE, can be divided into two main groups: solvent-free and solvent-based methods.
  • 2.2K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Application of electrospun nanocomposites on removal of harmful substances
Nanomaterials and nanotechnology will undoubtedly become core materials and technologies in advanced materials and technologies. In recent years, nanomaterials and nanotechnology have been widely used in environmental restoration due to their low cost, high efficiency, and other advantages. In this study, the high-performance polyurethane/rare earth (PU/RE) composite nanomaterials were fabricated via electrospinning. The electrospun nanomaterials for adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air was thoroughly investigated. The PU nanofiber containing 50 wt. % RE powder had the smallest fiber diameter of 356 nm; it also showed the highest VOC absorption capacity compared with other composite membranes, having an absorption capacity about three times greater than pure PU nanofibers.
  • 2.2K
  • 29 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Earth Shelter
An earth shelter, also called an earth house, earth bermed house, or underground house, is a structure (usually a house) with earth (soil) against the walls, on the roof, or that is entirely buried underground. Earth acts as thermal mass, making it easier to maintain a steady indoor air temperature and therefore reduces energy costs for heating or cooling. Earth sheltering became relatively popular after the mid-1970s, especially among environmentalists. However, the practice has been around for nearly as long as humans have been constructing their own shelters.
  • 2.2K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Critical Mineral Raw Materials
Since 2011, the European Commission assesses a 3-year list of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) for the EU economy within its Raw Materials Initiative. To date, 14 CRMs were identified in 2011, 20 in 2014 and 27 in 2017. These materials are mainly used in energy transition and digital technologies.
  • 2.2K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
¡Democracia Real YA!
¡Democracia Real YA! (DRY, Spanish for Real Democracy NOW!), also known as Plataforma Democracia Real Ya! (Real Democracy NOW Platform!), is a grassroots citizens' organization that was started in March 2011 in Spain. It sparked the political movement of May 15, 2011 (15M) whose protests gained worldwide attention. The protests been compared to the May 1968 social movement in France. ¡Democracia Real YA! is associated with approximately 200 smaller organizations. ¡Democracia Real YA! states in its manifesto that it is a broad social movement, dedicated to nonviolent protest, and that maintains no affiliation with any political party or labor union. It has not appointed any single leader and is unwilling to join any of the existing political bodies. It is, however, not an entirely apolitical movement. ¡Democracia Real YA! considers the current political and economic system incapable of listening to and representing its citizens and therefore demands changes to the current social and economic policies, which have led many people into unemployment, loss of their homes, and poverty. The organization denounces the way big businesses and banks dominate the political and economic sphere and aims to propose a series of solutions to these problems through grassroots participatory democracy and direct democracy, which is based on people's assemblies and consensus decision making. The movement drew inspiration from the 2009 Icelandic financial crisis protests, the Arab Spring, the 2010–11 Greek protests and the 2010–11 revolutions in Tunisia. The protest movement gained momentum on May 15 with a camping occupation in Madrid's main square, the Puerta del Sol, spreading to squares in 57 other major and smaller cities in Spain, and then to Spanish embassies all around the world. In April 2012 some of the initiators of the movement, following an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Platform held in Leganes, the movement split announcing the creation of an organizational structure and rules as a partnership, taking the same name, Asociación Democracia Real Ya, which caused the rejection of part of the rest of the members of the movement. Thus, there are currently active platform Real Democracy Now! on the one hand, and the association DRY on the other hand.
  • 2.2K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Ice Boat
An ice boat (often spelled as "iceboat") is a boat or purpose-built framework similar in functional design to a sail boat but fitted with skis or runners (skates) and designed to run over ice instead of through (liquid) water. Ice yachting is the sport of sailing and racing iceboats. Sail-able ice is known in the sport as "hard water" versus sailing on liquid or "soft" water. A related sport, land sailing, utilizes a configuration with an iceboat-like fuselage or frame equipped with wheels instead of runners. Iceboats commonly used for racing are usually only for one person, but several classes of two-seat and multiple-seat iceboats are more or less common. On some boats, a "side car" can be fitted to take others along for a ride.
  • 2.2K
  • 31 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Hox Gene Expression
Hox genes play key roles in axial patterning and regulating the regional identity of cells and tissues in a wide variety of animals from invertebrates to vertebrates.
  • 2.2K
  • 18 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Diabetic Complications: Oxidative Stress/Inflammation
Oxidative stress and inflammation are considered major drivers in the pathogenesis of diabetic complications, including renal and cardiovascular disease. A symbiotic relationship also appears to exist between oxidative stress and inflammation. Several emerging therapies target these crucial pathways, to alleviate the burden of the aforementioned diseases. Oxidative stress refers to an imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antioxidant defenses, a pathological state which not only leads to direct cellular damage but also an inflammatory cascade that further perpetuates tissue injury. Emerging therapeutic strategies tackle these pathways in a variety of ways, from increasing antioxidant defenses (antioxidants and Nrf2 activators) to reducing ROS production (NADPH oxidase inhibitors and XO inhibitors) or inhibiting the associated inflamma-tory pathways (NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors, lipoxins, GLP-1 receptor agonists, and AT-1 re-ceptor antagonists).
  • 2.2K
  • 14 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Enzymes-Assisted Extraction of Plants
Enzymes were used for enhancing production yield with mild and not hazardous applications. However, enzyme specificity, activity, plant origin and characteristics, ratio, and extraction conditions differ depending on the goal. The latest studies show that oligosaccharides released and formed by enzymes have a high potential to be slowly digestible starches (SDS) and possibly be labeled as prebiotics. Additionally, they excel in new technological, organoleptic, and physicochemical properties. Released novel derivatives and phenolic compounds have a significant role in human and animal health and gut-microbiota interactions, affecting many metabolic pathways. 
  • 2.2K
  • 16 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Atomic Force Microscopy
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is one of the microscopic techniques with the highest lateral resolution. It can usually be applied in air or even in liquids, enabling the investigation of a broader range of samples than scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which is mostly performed in vacuum. Since it works by following the sample surface based on the force between the scanning tip and the sample, interactions have to be taken into account, making the AFM of irregular samples complicated, but on the other hand it allows measurements of more physical parameters than pure topography.
  • 2.2K
  • 06 Apr 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
A Working Definition of Fake News
Current literature on fake news is rather abundant and mainly focused on history, variety, and types, rather than processes. This review draws on current literature to build a working definition of fake news focused on its present relevance to journalism and political communication contemporary debate, distinguishing it from non-pertinent conceptual varieties and contributing to a much-needed clarification on the subject. We performed a qualitative analysis of the literature published between 2016 and 2020. Data were extracted from Web of Science and Scopus. We define fake news as a type of online disinformation with misleading and/or false statements that may or may not be associated with real events, intentionally designed to mislead and/or manipulate a specific or imagined public through the appearance of a news format with an opportunistic structure (title, image, content) to attract the reader’s attention in order to obtain more clicks and shares and, therefore, greater advertising revenue and/or ideological gain. 
  • 2.2K
  • 23 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Blood Ethanol Levels
In the interplay of the gut microbiota and endogenous ethanol production, the production of ethanol through the endogenous fermentation of carbohydrates is an inevitable result. “Alcohol-producing” processes may be succinctly abstracted to ethanol’s constant formation from acetaldehyde in the human body through various metabolic processes. In such cases where it is not introduced from the environment, it is called “endogenous ethanol”.
  • 2.2K
  • 28 Aug 2023
Topic Review
Glutamine in brain cancer metabolism
Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid that plays a key role in the metabolism of proliferating cells including neoplastic cells. In the central nervous system (CNS), glutamine metabolism is particularly relevant, because the glutamine–glutamate cycle is a way of controlling the production of glutamate-derived neurotransmitters by tightly regulating the bioavailability of the amino acids in a neuron-astrocyte metabolic symbiosis-dependent manner. Glutamine-related metabolic adjustments have been reported in several CNS malignancies including malignant gliomas that are considered ‘glutamine addicted’. In these tumors, glutamine becomes an essential amino acid preferentially used in energy and biomass production including glutathione (GSH) generation, which is crucial in oxidative stress control. Therefore, in this review, we will highlight the metabolic remodeling that gliomas undergo, focusing on glutamine metabolism. We will address some therapeutic regimens including novel research attempts to target glutamine metabolism and a brief update of diagnosis strategies that take advantage of this altered profile. A better understanding of malignant glioma cell metabolism will help in the identification of new molecular targets and the design of new therapies.
  • 2.2K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
MDPI English Writing Prize 2020
The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks. The winners of the 2020 MDPI Writing Prize about the theme “My work and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” are posted on Encyclopedia. In this competition, we received many excellent submissions from entrants who shared their inspirational and thought-provoking work.
  • 2.2K
  • 01 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Micro-/Nanoencapsulated Fragrances and Flavours
Flavours and fragrances are volatile compounds of large interest for different applications. Due to their high tendency of evaporation and, in most cases, poor chemical stability, these compounds need to be encapsulated for handling and industrial processing. Encapsulation, indeed, resulted in being effective at overcoming the main concerns related to volatile compound manipulation, and several industrial products contain flavours and fragrances in an encapsulated form for the final usage of customers. Several organic or inorganic materials have been investigated for the production of coated micro- or nanosystems intended for the encapsulation of fragrances and flavours, among them, polymeric coating, leading to the formation of micro- or nanocapsules with a core-shell architecture, as well as a molecular inclusion complexation with cyclodextrins, are still the most used. 
  • 2.2K
  • 21 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Ti-Based Catalysts on Magnesium Hydride
Magnesium-based hydrides are considered as promising candidates for solid-state hydrogen storage and thermal energy storage, due to their high hydrogen capacity, reversibility, and elemental abundance of Mg. To improve the sluggish kinetics of MgH2, catalytic doping using Ti-based catalysts is regarded as an effective approach to enhance Mg-based materials.
  • 2.2K
  • 31 May 2021
Topic Review
Crackdown
Crackdown is a series of action-adventure video games created by David Jones and published by Xbox Game Studios. The series takes place in a futuristic dystopian city controlled and enforced by a secret organization called the Agency. The games center on the Agency's super soldiers, known as 'Agents', as they fight threats ranging from various criminal syndicates, a terrorist group known as 'Cell', and zombie-like monsters called 'Freaks'. Games of the series have been developed by various game developers, with the first game Crackdown completed by Realtime Worlds on February 20, 2007, and a sequel called Crackdown 2 developed by Ruffian Games on July 6, 2010. Both games were released for the Xbox 360. A third installment Crackdown 3 developed by Sumo Digital was released on February 15, 2019 for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. Although Crackdown started as a game that was released with access codes for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, the game itself has been met with positive critical reception and won several video game awards. Critics praised the sandbox style third-person shooter for allowing the ability to cause massive destruction in a non-linear gameplay, while also criticizing the series for lacking an actual story. The series has garnered mostly positive reception and commercial success.
  • 2.2K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
LuaJIT
LuaJIT is a tracing just in time compiler for the Lua programming language.
  • 2.2K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Argument Technology
Argument technology is a sub-field of artificial intelligence that focuses on applying computational techniques to the creation, identification, analysis, navigation, evaluation and visualisation of arguments and debates. In the 1980s and 1990s, philosophical theories of arguments in general, and argumentation theory in particular, were leveraged to handle key computational challenges, such as modeling non-monotonic and defeasible reasoning and designing robust coordination protocols for multi-agent systems. At the same time, mechanisms for computing semantics of Argumentation frameworks were introduced as a way of providing a calculus of opposition for computing what it is reasonable to believe in the context of conflicting arguments. With these foundations in place, the area was kick-started by a workshop held in the Scottish Highlands in 2000, the result of which was a book coauthored by philosophers of argument, rhetoricians, legal scholars and AI researchers. Since then, the area has been supported by various dedicated events such as the International Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA) which has run annually since 2001; the International Workshop on Argument in Multi Agent Systems (ArgMAS) annually since 2004; the Workshop on Argument Mining, annually since 2014, and the Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA), biennially since 2006. Since 2010, the field has also had its own journal, Argument & Computation, which was published by Taylor & Francis until 2016 and since then by IOS Press. One of the challenges that argument technology faced was a lack of standardisation in the representation and underlying conception of argument in machine readable terms. Many different software tools for manual argument analysis, in particular, developed idiosyncratic and ad hoc ways of representing arguments which reflected differing underlying ways of conceiving of argumentative structure. This lack of standardisation also meant that there was no interchange between tools or between research projects, and little re-use of data resources that were often expensive to create. To tackle this problem, the Argument Interchange Format set out to establish a common standard that captured the minimal common features of argumentation which could then be extended in different settings. Since about 2018, argument technology has been growing rapidly, with, for example, IBM's Grand Challenge, Project Debater, results for which were published in Nature in March 2021; German research funder, DFG's nationwide research programme on Robust Argumentation Machines, RATIO, begun in 2019; and UK nationwide deployment of The Evidence Toolkit by the BBC in 2019. A 2021 video narrated by Stephen Fry provides a summary of the societal motivations for work in argument technology. Argument technology has applications in a variety of domains, including education, healthcare, policy making, political science, intelligence analysis and risk management and has a variety of sub-fields, methodologies and technologies.
  • 2.2K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Secularization
Secularization is a complex sociological concept that denotes the diminishing influence and significance of religious beliefs and institutions in various aspects of society, such as politics, education, and culture. It involves the gradual shift away from a society where religious values and institutions play a central role in shaping public life to one where secular or non-religious principles increasingly guide social norms and institutions. This process is often characterized by the declining importance of religious authority, rituals, and practices in the face of the rise of secular ideologies and institutions.
  • 2.2K
  • 25 Jan 2024
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