Topic Review
Virtual Volunteering
Virtual volunteering refers to volunteer activities completed, in whole or in part, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter, or work computer or other Internet-connected device, such as a smart-phone (a cell phone with Internet functions) or personal digital assistant (PDA). Virtual volunteering is also known as online volunteering, remote volunteering or e-volunteering.
  • 246
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Virtual Exchange
Virtual exchange is a type of education program that uses technology to allow geographically-separated people to interact and communicate. This type of activity is most often situated in educational programs (but is also found in some youth organizations) in order to increase mutual understanding, global citizenship, digital literacies, and language learning. Models of virtual exchange are also known as telecollaboration, online intercultural exchange, globally networked teaching and learning, collaborative online international learning (COIL). Non-profit organizations such as Soliya (founded by Lucas Welch) and the Sharing Perspectives Foundation have designed and implement virtual exchange programs in partnership with universities and youth organizations. In 2017 the European Commission published a feasibility study into virtual exchange and in 2018 the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange project was launched in Europe and Southern Mediterranean countries. Educational institutions such as State University of New York's COIL Center and DePaul University use virtual exchange in higher education curricula to connect young people globally with a primary mission to help them grow in their understanding of each other's contexts (society, government, education, religion, environment, gender issues, etc.).
  • 786
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Villa Tunari Massacre
The Villa Tunari Massacre was a 27 June 1988 mass murder committed by UMOPAR (Rural Patrol Mobile Unit) troops in response to a protest by coca-growing peasants (cocaleros) in the town of Villa Tunari in Chapare Province, Bolivia. The cocalero movement had mobilized since late May 1988 in opposition to coca eradication under Law 1008, then on the verge of becoming law. According to video evidence and a joint church-labor investigative commission, UMOPAR opened fired on unarmed protesters, at least two of whom were fatally shot, and many of whom fled to their deaths over a steep drop into the San Mateo River. The police violence caused the deaths of 9 to 12 civilian protesters, including three whose bodies were never found, and injured over a hundred. The killings were followed by further state violence in Villa Tunari, Sinahota, Ivirgarzama, and elsewhere in the region, including machine gun fire, beatings, and arrests. The massacre helped bring about the consolidation of Chapare coca growers' unions into the Coordinadora of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba. Representatives of the National Congress, Catholic Church, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, and the Central Obrera Boliviana labor federation formed a joint "multisectoral commission" to investigate the repression in the Chapare, which traveled to the region on 30 June 1988.
  • 386
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Video Surveillance Systems
Video surveillance systems are widely deployed with large systems for use in strategic places such as home security, public transportation, banks, ATM centers, city centers, airports, and public roads, and play a vital role in protecting critical infrastructures. As various attacks are possible in these systems, identifying attacks and considering suitable security measures are essential. In this paper, we present a detailed review of existing and possible threats in video surveillance, CCTV, and IP-camera systems.
  • 523
  • 22 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Video Game Live Streaming
Video game live streaming is a kind of real-time video social media that integrates traditional broadcasting and online gaming. Real-time, sociability and suspense are the main features of video game live streaming. Video game live streaming can meet user demands in social integration, personal integration, tension release, affection, and cognition. In order to have a more comprehensive understanding of video game live streaming, the following text summarizes the background from the live streaming industry and research status. After that, the definition, users, features and community classification of video game live streaming are introduced in detail.
  • 6.4K
  • 02 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Verse of Mawadda
The Verse of Mawadda (Arabic: آية الْمَوَدَّة) refers to verse 42:23 of the Quran, the interpretation of which is disputed. This verse is often cited in Shia sources to support the elevated status of the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, known as the Ahl al-Bayt. Most Sunni authors reject the Shia view and offer various alternatives.
  • 1.2K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Variant Chinese Character
Variant Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 异体字; traditional Chinese: 異體字; pinyin: yìtǐzì; Kanji: 異体字; Hepburn: itaiji; Korean: 이체자; Hanja: 異體字; Revised Romanization: icheja) are Chinese characters that are homophones and synonyms. Most variants are allographs in most circumstances, such as casual handwriting. Some contexts require the usage of certain variants, such as in textbook editing.
  • 628
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
US Farmers Markets
Farmers markets are regular, recurring gatherings at a common facility or area where farmers and ranchers directly sell a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other locally grown farm products to consumers. Markets rebuild and maintain local and regional food systems, leading to an outsized impact on the food system relative to their share of produce sales. Previous research has demonstrated the multifaceted impacts that farmers markets have on the communities, particularly economically. Recent scholarship in the United States has expanded inquiry into social impacts that markets have on communities, including improving access to fresh food products and increasing awareness of the sustainable agricultural practices adopted by producers, as well developing tools for producers and market stakeholders to measure their impact on both producers and communities. 
  • 361
  • 31 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Urban Resilience Assessment
This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the state of knowledge on urban resilience assessment through mapping the knowledge domain and highlighting emerging trends during different periods. The objects of study were 420 papers published in the Web of Science from 1998 to 2020. Science mapping was done using VOSviewer and CiteSpace, two widely known software tools for bibliometrics analysis and scientometric visualization. The results show that research published on urban resilience assessment was very limited and fragmented until 2009, and the focus has mainly been on risk mitigation and vulnerability assessment. The intellectual base grew between 2010 and 2014, when a paradigm shift from approaches based on robustness and reliability toward more adaptation-oriented approaches occurred. Finally, the annual publication trends have grown rapidly over the past five years and there has been more emphasis on climate change adaptation and flood resilience.
  • 603
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Unperson
Newspeak is the language of Oceania, a fictional totalitarian state and the setting of the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell. To meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the ruling Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalized such concepts into thoughtcrime, as contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy. In "The Principles of Newspeak", the appendix to the novel, George Orwell explains that Newspeak usage follows most of the English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. Linguistically, the contractions of Newspeak—Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), etc.—derive from the syllabic abbreviations of Russian, which identify the government and social institutions of the Soviet Union, such as politburo (Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (Young Communists' League). The long-term political purpose of the new language is for every member of the Party and society, except the Proles—the working-class of Oceania—to exclusively communicate in Newspeak, by A.D. 2050; during that 66-year transition, the usage of Oldspeak (Standard English) shall remain interspersed among Newspeak conversations. Newspeak is also a constructed language, of planned phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, like Basic English, which Orwell promoted (1942–44) during the Second World War (1939–45), and later rejected in the essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946), wherein he criticizes the bad usage of English in his day: dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which produce the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning. Orwell's conclusion thematically reiterates linguistic decline: "I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions."
  • 389
  • 23 Nov 2022
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