Topic Review
Human Rights and Climate Change
Human Rights and Climate Change is a conceptual and legal framework under which international human rights and their relationship to global warming are studied, analyzed, and addressed. The framework has been employed by governments, United Nations organizations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, human rights and environmental advocates, and academics to guide national and international policy on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the core international human rights instruments. Human rights and climate change analysis focuses on the anticipated consequences to humans associated with global environmental phenomena including sea level rise, desertification, temperature increases, extreme weather events, and changes in precipitation, as well as adaptation and mitigation measures taken by governments in response to those phenomena that may involve human rights or related legal protections.
  • 436
  • 10 Oct 2022
Topic Review
FreedomWorks
FreedomWorks is a conservative and libertarian advocacy group based in Washington D.C., United States . FreedomWorks trains volunteers, assists in campaigns, and encourages them to mobilize, interacting with both fellow citizens and their political representatives. It is widely associated with the Tea Party movement.
  • 555
  • 10 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Minerals Approved by IMA (K)
This list includes those recognised minerals beginning with the letter K. The International Mineralogical Association is the international group that recognises new minerals and new mineral names, however minerals discovered before 1959 did not go through the official naming procedure, although some minerals published previously have been either confirmed or discredited since that date. This list contains a mixture of mineral names that have been approved since 1959 and those mineral names believed to still refer to valid mineral species (these are called "grandfathered" species). The list is divided into groups: The data was exported from mindat.org on 29 April 2005; updated up to 'IMA2018'. The minerals are sorted by name, followed by the structural group (rruff.info/ima and ima-cnmnc by mineralienatlas.de, mainly) or chemical class (mindat.org and basics), the year of publication (if it's before of an IMA approval procedure), the IMA approval and the Nickel–Strunz code. The first link is to mindat.org, the second link is to webmineral.com, and the third is to the Handbook of Mineralogy (Mineralogical Society of America).
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  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Energiewende in Germany
The Energiewende (German for energy transition) is the planned transition by Germany to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply. The term Energiewende is regularly used in English language publications without being translated (a loanword).:4 The new system will rely heavily on renewable energy (particularly wind, photovoltaics, and hydroelectricity), energy efficiency, and energy demand management. Most if not all existing coal-fired generation will need to be retired. The phase-out of Germany's fleet of nuclear reactors, to be complete by 2022, is a key part of the program. Legislative support for the Energiewende was passed in late 2010 and includes greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions of 80–95% by 2050 (relative to 1990) and a renewable energy target of 60% by 2050. These targets are ambitious. The Berlin-based policy institute Agora Energiewende noted that "while the German approach is not unique worldwide, the speed and scope of the Energiewende are exceptional". The Energiewende also seeks a greater transparency in relation to national energy policy formation. Germany has made significant progress on its GHG emissions reduction target, achieving a 27% decrease between 1990 and 2014. However the country will need to maintain an average GHG emissions abatement rate of 3.5% per year to reach its Energiewende goal, equal to the maximum historical value thus far. As of 2013, Germany spends €1.5 billion per year on energy research in an effort to solve the technical and social issues raised by the transition. This includes a number of computer studies that have confirmed the feasibility and a similar cost (relative to business-as-usual and given that carbon is adequately priced) of the Energiewende.
  • 1.3K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Tier-Scalable Reconnaissance
Tier-Scalable Reconnaissance is the term for an approach to deploying and controlling vehicles in multiple areas of interest, such as in the exploration of planets or diverse regions on Earth. It is not a rigid or fixed paradigm, but is infinitely extensible. It uses hierarchical levels of oversight called tiers, each tier commanding or controlling the vehicles within the tier beneath it. The size of each tier can be scaled from one to many vehicles.
  • 623
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Minerals Approved by IMA (T)
This list includes those recognised minerals beginning with the letter T. The International Mineralogical Association is the international group that recognises new minerals and new mineral names, however minerals discovered before 1959 did not go through the official naming procedure, although some minerals published previously have been either confirmed or discredited since that date. This list contains a mixture of mineral names that have been approved since 1959 and those mineral names believed to still refer to valid mineral species (these are called "grandfathered" species). The data was exported from mindat.org on 29 April 2005; updated up to 'IMA2018'. The minerals are sorted by name, followed by the structural group (rruff.info/ima and ima-cnmnc by mineralienatlas.de, mainly) or chemical class (mindat.org and basics), the year of publication (if it's before of an IMA approval procedure), the IMA approval and the Nickel–Strunz code.
  • 1.5K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Life Zones by Region
The climate and ecology of different locations on the globe naturally separate into life zones, depending on elevation, location, and latitude. The generally strong dependency on elevation is known as altitudinal zonation: the average temperature of a location decreases as the elevation increases. The general effect of elevation depends on atmospheric physics. However, the specific climate and ecology of any particular location depends on specific features of that location. This article provides a list of life zones by region, in order to illustrate the features of life zones for regions around the globe.
  • 497
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas. Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from urban growth. Whereas urbanization refers to the proportion of the total national population living in areas classified as urban, urban growth strictly refers to the absolute number of people living in those areas. The United Nations has projected that half of the world's population will live in urban areas at the end of 2008. It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. That is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will be by cities, with about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 10 years. Urbanization is relevant to a range of disciplines, including urban planning, geography, sociology, architecture, economics, and public health. The phenomenon has been closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time (e.g. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns), or as an increase in that condition over time. Therefore, urbanization can be quantified either in terms of the level of urban development relative to the overall population, or as the rate at which the urban proportion of the population is increasing. Urbanization creates enormous social, economic and environmental changes, which provide an opportunity for sustainability with the "potential to use resources more efficiently, to create more sustainable land use and to protect the biodiversity of natural ecosystems." Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior, whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify during the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. As a result, the world urban population growth curve has up till recently followed a quadratic-hyperbolic pattern. Today, in Asia the urban agglomerations of Osaka, Tokyo, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi, Jakarta, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Manila, Seoul, and Beijing are each already home to over 20 million people, while Delhi is forecast to approach or exceed 40 million people in the year 2035. Cities such as Tehran, Istanbul, Mexico City, São Paulo, London, Moscow, New York City, Lagos, Los Angeles, and Cairo are, or soon will be, home to over 15 million people each.
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  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Kuroshio Current
The Kuroshio (黒潮), also known as the Black or Japan Current (日本海流, Nihon Kairyū) or the Black Stream, is a north-flowing, warm ocean current on the west side of the North Pacific Ocean. Like the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, the Kuroshio is a powerful western boundary current and forms the western limb of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.
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  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse
The Carboniferous rainforest collapse (CRC) was a minor extinction event that occurred around 305 million years ago in the Carboniferous period. It altered the vast coal forests that covered the equatorial region of Euramerica (Europe and America). This event may have fragmented the forests into isolated 'islands', which in turn caused dwarfism and, shortly after, extinction of many plant and animal species. Following the event, coal-forming tropical forests continued in large areas of the Earth, but their extent and composition were changed. The event occurred at the end of the Moscovian and continued into the early Kasimovian stages of the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous).
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  • 08 Oct 2022
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