Topic Review
Authorizing GM Crop Varieties
Once a GM crop has completed the full review cycle for environmental safety, food and feed safety, and DUS/VCU testing, further steps are required to ensure its launch as a new variety for cultivation and safeguarding its sustainability. Again, policy considerations and necessary policy reforms are involved in these final stages, which are analyzed in the sections below. Prior to the planting of GM crop varieties in farmers’ fields, either from domestically produced or imported seeds, they will have to be authorized as certified seed or quality-declared seed in most SSA countries.
  • 567
  • 27 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Muklishgarh
Muklishgarh is a rang mahal fort in the foothills of the Himalayas in the Yamunanagar district of Haryana in India .
  • 566
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Northern Celestial Masters
The Northern Celestial Masters type of the Way of the Celestial Master (simplified Chinese: 天师道; traditional Chinese: 天師道; pinyin: Tiān Shī Dào) Daoist movement existed in the north of China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Northern Celestial Masters were a continuation of the Way of the Celestial Masters as it had been practiced in Sichuan province by Zhang Lu and his followers. After the community was forced to relocate in 215 CE, a group of Celestial Masters established themselves in Northern China. Kou Qianzhi, from a family who followed the Celestial Master, brought a new version of Celestial Master Daoism to the Northern Wei. The Northern Wei government embraced his form of Daoism and established it as the state religion, thereby creating a new Daoist theocracy that lasted until 450 CE. The arrival of Buddhism had great influence on the Northern Celestial Masters, bringing monasticism and influencing the diet of practitioners. Art produced in areas dominated by the Northern Celestial Masters also began to show Buddhist influence. When the theocracy collapsed, many Daoists fled to Louguan, which quickly became an important religious center. The Northern Celestial Masters survived as a distinct school at Louguan until the late 7th century CE, when they became integrated into the wider Daoist movement.
  • 565
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Spinning Dancer
The Spinning Dancer, also known as the Silhouette Illusion, is a kinetic, bistable, animated optical illusion GIF image showing a silhouette of a pirouetting female dancer. The illusion, created in 2003 by Japanese web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, involves the apparent direction of motion of the figure. Some observers initially see the figure as spinning clockwise (viewed from above) and some counterclockwise. Additionally, some may see the figure suddenly spin in the opposite direction. The illusion derives from the lack of visual cues for depth. For instance, as the dancer's arms move from viewer's left to right, it is possible to view her arms passing between her body and the viewer (that is, in the foreground of the picture, in which case she would be circling counterclockwise on her right foot) and it is also possible to view her arms as passing behind the dancer's body (that is, in the background of the picture, in which case she is seen circling clockwise on her left foot). When she is facing to the left or to the right, her breasts and ponytail clearly define the direction she is facing, although there is ambiguity in which leg is which. However, as she moves away from facing to the left (or from facing to the right), the dancer can be seen facing in either of two directions. At first, these two directions are fairly close to each other (both left, say, but one facing slightly forward, the other facing slightly backward) but they become further away from each other until we reach a position where her ponytail and breasts are in line with the viewer (so that neither her breasts nor her ponytail are seen so readily). In this position, she could be facing either away from the viewer or towards the viewer, so that the two possible positions are 180 degrees apart. Another interesting aspect of this illusion can be triggered by placing a mirror vertically, besides the image. The natural expectation would be for the normal image and its reflection to spin in opposite directions. This does not necessarily happen, and provides a paradoxical situation where both mirrored dancers spin in the same direction.
  • 565
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Architectural Interactions
In recent years, architectural interactions have become the center of many important reflections. However, there is little agreement on the subject. Some authors consider architecture to be about its relations with human and nonhuman agents. Others consider that buildings have an autonomous presence, which transcends all their interactions. These approaches are generally seen as incompatible. Although at the heart of the debate is the role of relations in architecture, their nature is not addressed. A closer look at architectural relations reveals that autonomy and relationality are not opposing, but complementary, aspects.
  • 565
  • 11 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Intangible Mosaic of Sacred Soundscapes in Medieval Serbia
The sacred art and architecture of medieval Serbia developed under the influence of both the Byzantine East and Latin West ever since the adoption of Christianity.  Here, the focuses are particularly on the period from the late 12th century when the Nemanjić dynasty came to the throne until the fall of Serbia under Ottoman rule in the mid-15th century, because this period was fundamental for the development of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as sacred architecture. It is argued that the archaeoacoustic studies of medieval sacred soundscapes should not be limited to church acoustics but also include open-air sacred sites to provide a complete analysis of the aural environment of religious practice and thus contribute to understanding the acoustic intention of medieval builders, as well as the aural experience of both clergy and laity. 
  • 565
  • 16 Jan 2023
Biography
Francesc Pi I Margall
Francisco Pi y Margall (Catalan: Francesc Pi i Margall) (29 April 1824 – 29 November 1901) was a Spanish federalist and republican politician and theorist who served as president of the short-lived First Spanish Republic in 1873. He was also a historian, philosopher, romanticist writer, and was also the leader of the Federal Democratic Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Pi was turned i
  • 563
  • 14 Nov 2022
Biography
Yamaga Sokō
Yamaga Sokō (山鹿 素行, 21 September 1622 – 23 October 1685) was a Japanese philosopher and strategist under the Tokugawa shogunate. As a scholar he applied the Confucian idea of the "superior man" to the samurai class of Japan. This became an important part of the samurai way of life and code of conduct. Yamaga Sokō had been studying the Chinese classics since the age of six, and at
  • 563
  • 16 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Heraldic Visitation
Heraldic visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms (and more often by junior officers of arms (or Heralds) as deputies) throughout England , Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to regulate and register the coats of arms of nobility and gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. They took place from 1530 to 1688, and their records (akin to an upper class census) provide important source material for historians and genealogists.
  • 562
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Paintings Generated by Text-to-Image System
Since the generative adversarial network (GAN) portrait painting titled “Edmond de Belamy” was constructed in 2018, AI art has already entered the public’s vision. One of the latest applications of AI is the generation of images based on natural language descriptions, which enhances the efficiency and effect of the transformation from creativity to visuality to a great extent. In the past, whether in traditional or digital painting creation, the author needed to be skilled in using tools and to have rich technical experience to accurately map the brain’s imagination to the visual layer. However, in co-creation with text-to-image AI generators, both artists and nonartists can input the text description to produce many high-quality images. During traditional painting creation, artists and nonartists in a painting task indicated quantitative and qualitative differences in some studies, such as artists spending more time on planning their painting, having more control over their creative processes, having more specific skills, and having more efficiency than nonartists. Whether such differences still exist in the new human–AI interaction mode and what new changes arise are worth discussing.
  • 560
  • 24 Nov 2022
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ScholarVision Creations