Your browser does not fully support modern features. Please upgrade for a smoother experience.
Subject:
All Disciplines Arts & Humanities Biology & Life Sciences Business & Economics Chemistry & Materials Science Computer Science & Mathematics Engineering Environmental & Earth Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology Physical Sciences Public Health & Healthcare Social Sciences
Sort by:
Most Viewed Latest Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A)
Filter:
All Topic Review Biography Peer Reviewed Entry Video Entry
Topic Review
Style (Sociolinguistics)
In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings. In this context, social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, or beliefs. Linguistic variation is at the heart of the concept of linguistic style—without variation there is no basis for distinguishing social meanings. Variation can occur syntactically, lexically, and phonologically. Many approaches to interpreting and defining style incorporate the concepts of indexicality, indexical order, stance-taking, and linguistic ideology. Note that a style is not a fixed attribute of a speaker. Rather, a speaker may use different styles depending on context. Additionally, speakers often incorporate elements of multiple styles into their speech, either consciously or subconsciously, thereby creating a new style.
  • 6.1K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Maitum Anthropomorphic Pottery
In 1991, the National Museum archaeological team discovered anthropomorphic secondary burial jars in Ayub Cave, Barangay Pinol, Maitum, Sarangani Province, Mindanao, Philippines. The jars are commonly known today as Maitum jars. They are made of earthenware, and are characterized by their design that suggests human figures with complete or partial facial features of the first inhabitants in Mindanao. Furthermore, they give emphasis to the Filipinos’ popular belief of life after death. According to Dr. Eusebio Dizon, head of the archaeological team, this type of burial jars are “remarkably unique and intriguing” because they have not been found elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Thus, many archaeologists from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Indonesia gained interest on this initial find and a number of archaeological - either government or privately sponsored - excavations have been conducted to recover these artifacts. These jars have characteristics that belong to the Developed Metal Age Period in the Philippines [calibrated date of 190 BC to 500 AD]. According to the laboratory results determined through radiocarbon dating, these secondary burial jars date back to the Metal Age. Two conventional dates were 1830 +/-60 B.P. [calibrated date of AD 70 to 370] and 1920 +/- 50 B.P. [calibrated date of 5 BC to 225 AD]. Experts used soot samples taken from the walls of a small earthenware vessel found inside one of the larger burial jars.
  • 6.1K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Roadside Unit Deployment in Internet of Vehicles Systems
The network technology known as Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has been developed to improve road safety and vehicle security, with the goal of servicing the digital demands of car drivers and passengers. The highly dynamical network topology that characterizes these networks, and which often leads to discontinuous transmissions, is one of the most significant challenges of IoV. To address this issue, IoV infrastructure-based components known as roadside units (RSU) are designed to play a critical role by providing continuous transmission coverage and permanent connectivity. The main challenges that arise when deploying RSUs are balancing IoVs’ performances and total cost so that optimal vehicle service coverage is provided with respect to some target Quality of Service (QoS) such as: service coverage, throughput, low latency, or energy consumption.
  • 6.1K
  • 05 May 2022
Topic Review
Thorium-Based Nuclear Power
Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle [Note 1] —including much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. One advantage of thorium fuel is its low weaponization potential; it is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233/232 and plutonium-238 isotopes largely consumed in thorium reactors. Between 1999 and , the number of operational thorium reactors in the world has risen from zero, to a handful of research reactors, to commercial plans for producing full-scale thorium-based reactors for use as power plants on a national scale. Some believe thorium is key to developing a new generation of cleaner, safer nuclear power. In 2011 a group of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology assessed thorium-based power as "a 1000+ year solution or a quality low-carbon bridge to truly sustainable energy sources solving a huge portion of mankind’s negative environmental impact." However, development of thorium power has significant start-up costs. Development of breeder reactors in general (including thorium reactors, which are breeders by nature) will increase proliferation concerns. After studying the feasibility of using thorium, nuclear scientists Ralph W. Moir and Edward Teller suggested that thorium nuclear research should be restarted after a three-decade shutdown and that a small prototype plant should be built.
  • 6.1K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Crash Boats of World War 2
Crash boats, at the time known as "aircraft rescue boat" or "air-sea rescue boat" were wooden speedboats built to rescue the crew of downed United States and other Allies aircraft during World War II. US boats came from observation of British experience with High-speed launches during the Battle of Britain. By the end of World War II America had produced 300,000 planes, creating a need to have crash rescue boats stationed around the globe. These boats were fast boats used to rescue pilots, crew and passengers from downed aircraft in search and rescue, air-sea rescue missions. The boats would race out to a crash site and rescue wounded aircrew. Some speed boats built before the war were acquired and converted to be crash boats and many new boats were built. Standard crash boats were built in four lengths for World War II. The smallest standard size boat was 42 feet long. The larger boats were 63 or 85 or 104 feet long. They were built for the Army Air Forces, US Navy and some were transferred to Allies. The design was similar to patrol boats built for the war, but with less or no armament and first aid equipped. The boats were designed to be light and fast to be able to get to the downed aircrew as fast as possible. Most were used in the Pacific war across the vast South Pacific, in the Island hopping campaign. Some were station on the West Coast of the United States to support the vast training centers. Many were designated Air Rescue Boats or ARB or AVR or P or C or R Hull classification symbol. After the war most were abandoned or destroyed, a few served in the Korean war (with United States Air Force ), some sold to private and some donated to Sea Scouts.
  • 6.1K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Silappatikaram
Silappatikāram (Tamil: சிலப்பதிகாரம், IPA: ʧiləppət̪ikɑːrəm, lit. "the Tale of an Anklet"), also referred to as Silappathikaram or Silappatikaram, is the earliest Hindu-Jain Tamil semi-legendary epic. It is a poem of 5,730 lines in almost entirely akaval (aciriyam) meter. The epic is a tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannaki and her husband Kovalan. The Silappathikaram has more ancient roots in the Tamil bardic tradition, as Kannaki and other characters of the story are mentioned or alluded to in the Sangam literature such as in the Naṟṟiṇai and later texts such as the Kovalam Katai. It is attributed to a prince-turned-monk Iḷaṅkõ Aṭikaḷ, and was probably composed in the 5th or 6th century CE. The Silappatikaram is set in a flourishing seaport city of the early Chola kingdom. Kannaki and Kovalan are a newly married couple, in love, and living in bliss. Over time, Kovalan meets Matavi (Madhavi) – a courtesan. He falls for her, leaves Kannaki and moves in with Matavi. He spends lavishly on her. Kannaki is heartbroken, but as the chaste woman, she waits despite her husband's unfaithfulness. During the festival for Indra, the rain god, there is a singing competition. Kovalan sings a poem about a woman who hurt her lover. Matavi then sings a song about a man who betrayed his lover. Each interprets the song as a message to the other. Kovalan feels Matavi is unfaithful to him, and leaves her. Kannaki is still waiting for him. She takes him back. Kannagi and Kovalan leave the city and travel to Madurai of the Pandya kingdom. Kovalan is penniless and destitute. He confesses his mistakes to Kannagi. She forgives him and tells him the pain his unfaithfulness gave her. Then she encourages her husband to rebuild their life together and gives him one of her jeweled anklets to sell to raise starting capital. Kovalan sells it to a merchant, but the merchant falsely frames him as having stolen the anklet from the queen. The king arrests Kovalan and then executes him, without the due checks and processes of justice. When Kovalan does not return home, Kannagi goes searching for him. She learns what has happened. She protests the injustice and then proves Kovalan's innocence by throwing in the court the other jeweled anklet of the pair. The king accepts his mistake. Kannagi curses the king and curses the people of Madurai, tearing off her breast and throwing it at the gathered public. The king dies. The society that had made her suffer, suffers in retribution as the city of Madurai is burnt to the ground because of her curse. In the third section of the epic, gods and goddesses meet Kannagi and she goes to heaven with god Indra. The royal family of the Chera kingdom learns about her, resolves to build a temple with Kannagi as the featured goddess. They go to the Himalayas, bring a stone, carve her image, call her goddess Pattini, dedicate a temple, order daily prayers, and perform a royal sacrifice. The Silappathikaram is an ancient literary Jain masterpiece. It is to the Tamil culture what the Iliad is to the Greek culture, states R. Parthasarathy. It blends the themes, mythologies and theological values found in the Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions. It is a Tamil story of love and rejection, happiness and pain, good and evil like all classic epics of the world. Yet unlike other epics that deal with kings and armies caught up with universal questions and existential wars, the Silappathikaram is an epic about an ordinary couple caught up with universal questions and internal, emotional war. The Silappathikaram legend has been a part of the Tamil oral tradition. The palm-leaf manuscripts of the original epic poem, along with those of the Sangam literature, were rediscovered in monasteries in the second half of the 19th century by UV Swaminatha Aiyar – a pandit and Tamil scholar. After being preserved and copied in temples and monasteries in the form of palm-leaf manuscripts, Aiyar published its first partial edition on paper in 1872, the full edition in 1892. Since then the epic poem has been translated into many languages including English.
  • 6.1K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Black Tiger (Animal)
A black tiger is a rare colour variant of the tiger and is not a distinct species or geographic subspecies.
  • 6.1K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Solar Reflectance Measurement
The relative amount of solar radiation reflected by a surface is specified as solar reflectance, or albedo. The latter term sometimes refers only to visible sunlight (Vis), while the former generally refers to the entire spectrum of solar radiation, including near-infrared (NIR) and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. However, the scientific and technical communities consider albedo and solar reflectance synonymous, with both referring to the entire solar spectrum. Solar reflectance is usually expressed as a value between zero, for a surface absorbing all incoming radiation, and one, for a perfect reflector—or as a percentage between 0 and 100%. For an opaque surface, solar reflectance is complementary to solar absorptance—that is, the ratio of absorbed to total incident solar energy. Several instruments are available for its measurement, in the laboratory on in situ, according to several standard test methods.
  • 6.1K
  • 23 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University in the City of New York in Manhattan, New York City . Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of the oldest business schools in the world. It is one of six Ivy League business schools, and is among the most selective of top business schools.
  • 6.1K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
French Geodesic Mission
The French Geodesic Mission (also called the Geodesic Mission to Peru, Geodesic Mission to the Equator and the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission) was an 18th-century expedition to what is now Ecuador carried out for the purpose of measuring the roundness of the Earth and measuring the length of a degree of latitude at the Equator. The mission was one of the first geodesic (or geodetic) missions carried out under modern scientific principles, and the first major international scientific expedition.
  • 6.1K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Transactinide Element
In chemistry, transactinide elements (also, transactinides, or super-heavy elements) are the chemical elements with atomic numbers from 104 to 120. Their atomic numbers are immediately greater than those of the actinides, the heaviest of which is lawrencium (atomic number 103). Glenn T. Seaborg first proposed the actinide concept, which led to the acceptance of the actinide series. He also proposed the transactinide series ranging from element 104 to 121 and the superactinide series approximately spanning elements 122 to 153. The transactinide seaborgium was named in his honor. By definition, transactinide elements are also transuranic elements, i.e. have an atomic number greater than uranium (92). The transactinide elements all have electrons in the 6d subshell in their ground state. Except for rutherfordium and dubnium, even the longest-lasting isotopes of transactinide elements have extremely short half-lives, measured in seconds, or smaller units. The element naming controversy involved the first five or six transactinide elements. These elements thus used systematic names for many years after their discovery had been confirmed. (Usually the systematic names are replaced with permanent names proposed by the discoverers relatively shortly after a discovery has been confirmed.) Transactinides are radioactive and have only been obtained synthetically in laboratories. None of these elements has ever been collected in a macroscopic sample. Transactinide elements are all named after physicists and chemists or important locations involved in the synthesis of the elements. IUPAC defines an element to exist if its lifetime is longer than 10−14 seconds, which is the time it takes for the nucleus to form an electron cloud.
  • 6.1K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Cortisol and Cardiovascular System
The synthesis and secretion of cortisol are controlled by the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. Cortisol exhibits a proper 24-h circadian rhythm that affects the brain, the autonomic nervous system, the heart, and the vasculature that prepares the cardiovascular system for optimal function during these anticipated behavioral cycles.
  • 6.1K
  • 22 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Bagging on Fruit Quality
Fruit bagging consists essentially of enclosing a young fruit in a food bag by capping the bag with a ribbon or a clamp on the fruit stalk. Isolating the fruit from the external environment protects it during development from mechanical or biotic damage, especially in regions where fruits are prone to attacks by fungi, bacteria, insects and even birds.
  • 6.1K
  • 18 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire
The Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) is an evaluation tool used to assess perceived usability, and it does not require a license for its usage. As PSSUQ is a common and widely used usability tool it has been translated into many languages, mainly European.
  • 6.1K
  • 20 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the same sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation within the heterosexual–homosexual continuum. Scientists do not yet know the exact cause of sexual orientation, but they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences and do not view it as a choice. Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor biologically-based theories. There is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial, biological causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males. There is no substantive evidence which suggests parenting or early childhood experiences play a role with regard to sexual orientation. While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research shows that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects. There is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation. The most common adjectives for homosexual people are lesbian for females and gay for males, but the term gay also commonly refers to both homosexual females and males. The percentage of people who are gay or lesbian and the proportion of people who are in same-sex romantic relationships or have had same-sex sexual experiences are difficult for researchers to estimate reliably for a variety of reasons, including many gay and lesbian people not openly identifying as such due to prejudice or discrimination such as homophobia and heterosexism. Homosexual behavior has also been documented in many non-human animal species, though homosexual orientation is not significantly observed in other animals. Many gay and lesbian people are in committed same-sex relationships. These relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships in essential psychological respects. Homosexual relationships and acts have been admired, as well as condemned, throughout recorded history, depending on the form they took and the culture in which they occurred. Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a global movement towards freedom and equality for gay people, including the introduction of anti-bullying legislation to protect gay children at school, legislation ensuring non-discrimination, equal ability to serve in the military, equal access to health care, equal ability to adopt and parent, and the establishment of marriage equality.
  • 6.1K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Nicaea
Nicaea or Nicea (/naɪˈsiːə/; Greek: Νίκαια, Níkaia; Turkish: İznik) was an ancient city in northwestern Anatolia, and is primarily known as the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea (the first and seventh Ecumenical councils in the early history of the Christian Church), the Nicene Creed (which comes from the First Council), and as the capital city of the Empire of Nicaea following the Fourth Crusade in 1204, until the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261. The ancient city is located within the modern Turkish city of İznik (whose modern name derives from Nicaea's), and is situated in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake Ascanius, bounded by ranges of hills to the north and south. It is situated with its west wall rising from the lake itself, providing both protection from siege from that direction, as well as a source of supplies which would be difficult to cut off. The lake is large enough that it could not be blockaded from the land easily, and the city was large enough to make any attempt to reach the harbour from shore-based siege weapons very difficult. The ancient city is surrounded on all sides by 5 kilometres (3 mi) of walls about 10 metres (33 ft) high. These are in turn surrounded by a double ditch on the land portions, and also included over 100 towers in various locations. Large gates on the three landbound sides of the walls provided the only entrance to the city. Today the walls have been pierced in many places for roads, but much of the early work survives and, as a result, it is a major tourist destination.
  • 6.1K
  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Thermodynamic Dissipation Theory of Life
The Thermodynamic Dissipation Theory of the Origin and Evolution of Life argues that the escence of the origin of life was the microscopic dissipative structuring under UVC light of organic pigments (now known as the fundamental molecules of life - those common to all three domains) and their proliferation over the entire Earth surface, driven by the thermodynamic imperative of dissipating this part of the Archean solar spectrum into heat. With time, dissipative structuring led to ever more complex biosynthetic pathways for creating pigments and their support structures (and processes) which could dissipate not only the UVC region but also other UV regions and the visible wavelengths, until today reaching the "red edge" (at approximately 700 nm). The heat of dissipation of photons absorbed on organic pigments in water then catalyzes a host of coupled secondary dissipative processes such as; the water cycle, ocean and wind currents, hurricanes, etc. pushing the limit for dissipation of the incident light even further towards the infrared. The thermodynamic dissipation theory thus assgins an explicit thermodynamic function to life; the dissipative structuring, proliferation, and evolution of molecular pigments and their complexes from common precursor carbon based molecules under the impressed short wavelength solar photon potential to perform the explicit thermodynamic function of dissipating this light into long wavelength infrared light (heat). In a general sense, the origin of life is no different than the origin of other dissipative structuring processes like hurricanes and the water cycle, except that these latter processes deal with structuring involving hydrogen bonding while life deals with structuring involving covalent bonding. The external photon potential supplied continuously by the environment (our Sun), and its dissipation into heat by the assembly of dissipative structures, are, therefore, both integral components necessary for understanding life. Difficult problems related to the origin of life, such as enzyme-less replication of RNA and DNA, homochirality of the fundamental molecules, and the origin of amino acid -codon assignments (information encoding in RNA and DNA), also find simple explanations within this same dissipative thermodynamic framework once the existence of a relation between primordial RNA and DNA replication and UV-C photon dissipation is established.
  • 6.1K
  • 04 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Transparent Conducting Oxides
A Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCO) is a wide band-gap semiconductor that has high concentration of free electrons in its conduction band.
  • 6.1K
  • 31 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Google+
Google Plus (stylized as Google+) is an Internet-based social network that is owned and operated by Google. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics have varied, depending on how the service is defined. Three Google executives have overseen the service, which has undergone substantial changes leading to a redesign in November 2015. On October 8, 2018, Google announced that it was shutting down Google+ for consumers, citing low user engagement and a software error, first reported by The Wall Street Journal , that potentially exposed the data of hundreds of thousands of users. Google indicated that Google+ would operate until August 2019, allowing users to download and migrate their information.
  • 6.1K
  • 12 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Smart Glass
The term “smart window” was coined by Granqvist in 1985. From the early 1980s, smart glazing has been a rapidly developing innovative technology that is aimed to help manage energy transfer through the building’s envelope, evading unnecessary “cooling and heating of indoor air”. The use of smart glass, which helps to regulate the amount of light (and heat) entering a building, is one of the possible ways to reduce energy consumption in buildings while maintaining an appropriate level of comfort for users. Smart glass greatly influences the building envelope performance in (i) thermal management, (ii) daylight harvesting and regulation, (iii) reduction of glare, (iv) maintenance of views, (v) power capture, and finally (vi) activating the envelope as an information display. Some technologies are currently available on the market, although—in light of the many shortcomings of the existing solutions—smart glass is the subject of ongoing “intensive research aimed at improving the technology and its widespread use”.
  • 6.1K
  • 23 Sep 2021
  • Page
  • of
  • 2727
Featured Entry Collections
>>

Featured Reprints

>>
Encyclopedia of Digital Society, Industry 5.0 and Smart City
Encyclopedia of Engineering
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Encyclopedia of Medieval Royal Iconography
Academic Video Service
Feedback