Topic Review
Aerogel-Based Plasters
Aerogel has entered the construction field in the last two decades as a component of many insulation products, due to its high thermal performance. Aerogel-based plasters allow the matching of high thermal performance and limited thickness. This makes them suitable when retrofitting an existing building and also when restoring a heritage building. This entry presents the state of the art of the research on aerogel-based plasters as a part of the aerogel-products for the building sector.
  • 1.7K
  • 08 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Aesthetic and Educational Aspects in Religious Architecture
The major importance in the process of human development involves personal, individual and group experiences of meetings in various areas of religious architecture that operate with the language of signs and symbols, modern artistic forms, single-space harmony, and atmosphere—an invisible order of things. In recent years, a number of studies have been carried out that attempted to define what makes the place of sacrum sufficiently meaningful, mysterious, and still necessary in order to establish a spiritual relationship with the community of believers and with God, which is relevant in one’s transition to adulthood.
  • 850
  • 20 May 2022
Topic Review
Aesthetic Education in Chinese Schools
Since the promulgation of the first school education regulations in the early 20th century, Chinese school aesthetic education has gone through its first century of history. Six stages of development have been formed in this century of vicissitudes, namely, the budding period, the starting period, the salvation movement period, the tortuous development period, the reconstruction period, and the modernization period of the new era. Aesthetic education in Chinese schools places a prominent place on “establishing, cultivating and clarifying morality”, emphasizes the role of “beauty” in “goodness”, and follows the aesthetic guideline of “unity of beauty and goodness”. Art education and its practical activities are the main content of school aesthetic education. The formation mechanism, laws, and characteristics of the sustainable development of school aesthetic education in China are summarized from the perspective of the century-old school aesthetic education policy, which is of theoretical guidance for the study of the future development of school aesthetic education in China.
  • 870
  • 11 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Aether (Classical Element)
According to ancient and medieval science, aether (/ˈiːθər/), also spelled æther, aither, or ether and also called quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere. The concept of aether was used in several theories to explain several natural phenomena, such as the traveling of light and gravity. In the late 19th century, physicists postulated that aether permeated all throughout space, providing a medium through which light could travel in a vacuum, but evidence for the presence of such a medium was not found in the Michelson–Morley experiment, and this result has been interpreted as meaning that no such luminiferous aether exists.
  • 6.5K
  • 02 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Affects and Care Labor in Ladies Coupe
Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupé (2001) is about six women who meet in an express train’s compartment in southern India. One of these women, Akhila, is the narrator of the novel, while we hear the voices of the other women only when they narrate their stories in first person to Akhila. The way the women tell these stories one by one is in the spirit of empowering Akhila, who is portrayed as a woman bound within heteronormative ideas of coupledom and gender-based expectations of care labor within patriarchal families. The women also encourage her, by example, to question the accepted ethical model of feminist practice within an already unethical patriarchal structure of society.
  • 205
  • 13 Oct 2023
Topic Review
African American Studies
African American studies (alternately Black studies, or Africana studies, among other terms) is an interdisciplinary academic field that is primarily devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of black people from the United States . African American studies are a sub-field of African diaspora studies and Africana studies, the study of the people of African origin worldwide. The field has been defined in different ways, but taken broadly, it not only studies African slave descendants but also any community of the African diaspora linked to the Americas. The field includes scholars of African American (as well as Caribbean, African, and Afro-European) literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. And, increasingly, African American Studies departments are hiring and partnering with STEM scholars. Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner. Programs and departments of African American Studies were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for black studies at San Francisco State. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-months strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures. Black studies is a systematic way of studying black people in the world – such as their history, culture, sociology, policies, experience, issues and religion. It is a study of the black experience and the effect of society on them and their effect within society. This study aims to, among other things, help eradicate many racial stereotypes. Black studies implements history, family structure, social and economic pressures, stereotypes, and gender relationships.
  • 1.4K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
African-American Studies
African-American studies (alternately named Afroamerican studies, or in US education, black studies) is an interdisciplinary academic field that is primarily devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of black people from the United States . African American studies are a sub-field of African diaspora studies and Africana studies, the study of the people of African origin worldwide. The field has been defined in different ways, but taken broadly, it not only studies African slave descendants but also any community of the African diaspora linked to the Americas. The field includes scholars of African-American (as well as Caribbean, African, and Afro-European) literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. And, increasingly, African-American Studies departments are hiring and partnering with STEM scholars. Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner. Programs and departments of African American Studies were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for black studies at San Francisco State. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-months strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures. Black studies is a systematic way of studying black people in the world – such as their history, culture, sociology, policies, experience, issues and religion. It is a study of the black experience and the effect of society on them and their effect within society. This study aims to, among other things, help eradicate many racial stereotypes. Black studies implements history, family structure, social and economic pressures, stereotypes, and gender relationships.
  • 275
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Afrikaans Folklore
Learners of Afrikaans as an additional language could be enabled to respond to aesthetical, emotional, cultural and social values. Through the use of Afrikaans folklore teachers can focus on developing the learners' ability to behave with cultural and aesthetic sensitivity in different social contexts. Afrikaans examples of folklore are mentioned and discussed briefly to include stories with humour, magic, the transmission of social and cultural values and traditions, ecological meaning, idiomatic expressions, praise poems, ogre characters and stereotypes. By means of a well-known background and/or context of a text, learners of Afrikaans as an additional language can become aware of the aesthetic range of the target language; they can become acquainted with the depth and content of meaning implied in the text. If a text is understood, the reader becomes personally involved and this, in itself, can lead the reader to interact creatively with the text - from the mechanical aspect of the language system to the analytical aspect - where s/he can participate in the story. The learner can thus discover how the events unfold, s/he can share the characters' emotional experiences and communicate their personal responses. Herein lies the relevance of a good reading text (despite the origin) - because the reader inhabits the text and in the process the language becomes transparent.
  • 1.5K
  • 31 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Agency (LDS Church)
Agency (also referred to as free agency or moral agency), in the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), is "the privilege of choice which was introduced by God the Eternal Father to all of his spirit children in the premortal state". Mortal life is viewed as a test of faith, where our choices are central to the plan of salvation in Latter-day Saint teaching. "It was essential for their eternal progression that they be subjected to the influences of both good and evil". LDS Church members believe that Lucifer rebelled against the God's plan, which resulted in a war in heaven, and Lucifer being cast out of heaven and becoming Satan. Church members believe that all individuals have the ability to differentiate between good and evil and that Satan and his followers are not able to tempt people beyond the point where they can resist. This implies that mortals can be held accountable for their actions; mortals will be judged by God based on a combination of one's faith and works (with salvation coming only through the power, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ).
  • 410
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Agenda 21 for Culture
Agenda 21 for culture (now also known as Culture 21) is a program for cultural governance developed in 2002–2004 and organized by United Cities and Local Governments. Part of the program's premise is to add culture as a fourth conceptual pillar of sustainable development in governance, the historical three pillars of which are environment, social inclusion, and economics.
  • 497
  • 30 Sep 2022
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