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Topic Review
Effects of Animal Venoms on Human Innate Immunity
Venoms are products of specialized glands and serve many living organisms to immobilize and kill prey, start digestive processes and act as a defense mechanism. Venoms affect different cells, cellular structures and tissues, such as skin, nervous, hematological, digestive, excretory and immune systems, as well as the heart, among other structures. Components of both the innate and adaptive immune systems can be stimulated or suppressed. Innate immunity is the first line of defense against microorganisms and external stimuli; it is nonspecific and is composed of physical barriers, soluble antimicrobial peptides and molecules, effector cells and phagocytes. Studying the effects on the cells and molecules produced by the immune system has been useful in many biomedical fields. The effects of venoms can be the basis for research and development of therapeutic protocols useful in the modulation of the immunological system, including different autoimmune diseases. 
  • 414
  • 10 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Archaeogaming
Archaeogaming is an archaeological framework which, broadly speaking, includes the study of archaeology in and of video games as well as the use of video-games for archaeological purposes. To this end, the study can include, but is in no means limited to: the physical excavation of video-game hardware, the use of archaeological methods within game worlds, the creation of video-games for or about archaeological practices and outcomes or the critical study of how archaeology is represented in video-games. Virtual and augmented reality applications in archaeology might also be subsumed within its rubric. M. Dennis states that archaeogaming is “the utilization and treatment of immaterial space to study created culture, specifically through videogames” which “requires treating a game world, a world bounded and defined by the limitations of its hardware, software and coding choices, as both a closed universe and as an extension of the external culture that created it. Everything that goes into the immaterial space comes from its external cultural source, in one way or another.” Taking this into consideration the archaeogaming framework indicates that there is no functional difference between studying archaeology in the physical, material world, and implementing it with regards to the study, critique and creation of video-games for and about archaeology. As such it is said that archaeogaming “requires the same standards of practice as the physical collection of excavated data, only with a different toolset. It also provides the opportunity to use game worlds to reflect on practice, theory and the perceptions of [archaeology].”
  • 413
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Coverage Data
A coverage is the digital representation of some spatio-temporal phenomenon. ISO 19123 provides the definition: Coverages play an important role in geographic information systems (GIS), geospatial content and services, GIS data processing, and data sharing. A coverage is represented by its "domain" (the universe of extent) and a collection representing the coverage's values at each defined location within its range. For example, a satellite image derived from remote sensing might record varying degrees of light pollution. Aerial photography, land cover data, and digital elevation models all provide coverage data. Generally, a coverage can be multi-dimensional, such as 1-D sensor timeseries, 2-D satellite images, 3-D x/y/t image time series or x/y/z geo tomograms, or 4-D x/y/z/t climate and ocean data. However, coverages are more general than just regularly gridded imagery. The corresponding standards (see below) address regular and irregular grids, point clouds, and general meshes. An interoperable service definition for navigating, accessing, processing, and aggregation of coverages is provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS), a spatio-temporal coverage query language.
  • 412
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Carbon Diet
A carbon diet refers to reducing the impact on climate change by reducing greenhouse gas production specifically, CO2 production. In today’s society, humans produce CO2 in every day activities such as driving, heating, deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. It has been found that carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions. For years, governments and corporations have been attempting to balance out their emissions by participating in carbon-offsetting — the practice in which they invest in renewable energy to compensate for the global-warming pollution that they produce. Despite these efforts the results are still far off and we continue to see growth in CO2 concentration. Now, a growing number of individuals are trying to make a reduction in the amount of CO2 that is being produced by participating in low carbon dieting. This small adjustment in household CO2 production has the potential to reduce emissions much more quickly than other kinds of changes and it deserves explicit consideration as part of climate policy. It can potentially help avoid “overshoot” of greenhouse gas concentration targets; provide a demonstration effect; reduce emissions at low cost; and buy time to develop new technologies, policies, and institutions to reach long-term greenhouse gas emission targets and to develop adaptation strategies.
  • 408
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Transfer of Natural Radionuclides in Terrestrial Food Chains
From the radiation protection point of view, less important natural radionuclides are 238U, 226Ra, 40K, and Th isotopes. However, 238U is a long-lived (t½ = 4.5 × 109 a) alpha emitter whose chemical toxicity exceeds its radiological toxicity. Although isotope 238U is not considered to cause significant radiation exposure, it is still the mother nuclide of a whole uranium decay series, producing isotopes of astatine, bismuth, lead, polonium, protactinium, radium, radon, thallium, and thorium while decaying. 40K also has a very long half-life (t½ = 1.28 × 109 a).
  • 407
  • 14 Feb 2023
Topic Review
1888 Ritter Island Tsunami
On the morning of March 13, 1888, an explosion took place on Ritter Island, a small volcanic island in the Bismarck and Solomon Seas, between New Britain and Umboi Island. This event is the largest volcanic island sector collapse in recent history. The explosion resulted in the almost complete loss of the island and generated a tsunami with runups of up to 20 meters (66 ft) that caused damage more than 600 kilometers (370 mi) away and killed anywhere between 500 and 3,000 on neighbouring islands, including scientists and explorers.
  • 405
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
High Resolution Wide Swath SAR Imaging
High Resolution Wide Swath (HRWS) imaging is an important branch in Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, a remote sensing technique capable of providing high resolution images independent of weather conditions and sunlight illumination. This makes SAR very attractive for the systematic observation of dynamic processes on the Earth's surface, which is useful for environmental monitoring, earth resource mapping and military systems. SAR technology has provided terrain structural information to geologists for mineral exploration, oil spill boundaries on water to environmentalists, sea state and ice hazard maps to navigators, and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and detecting information to military operations. Conventional SAR systems are limited in that a wide swath can only be achieved at the expense of a degraded azimuth resolution. Since wide coverage swaths and high resolution output are both important, this poses challenges and contradicting requirements on the design of space-borne SAR systems and related new algorithms.
  • 399
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
List of Minerals Approved by IMA (I)
This list includes those recognised minerals beginning with the letter I. 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).
  • 398
  • 07 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Spruce-fir Forests
Fir and spruce forests are greatly affected by slight fluctuations in climate. Temperature is the primary determinate for spatial patterns of fir and spruce. The two dominant trees in this type of forest are Picea engelmannii (Engelmann spruce) and Abies lasiocarpa (subalpine fir). Although thick-barked trees, such as the Pinus resinosa, frequently survive fire, the thin bark of spruce make them more vulnerable. Trees such as the Douglas fir withstand much of the fire due to the thicker bark they have. The scale of the burn mosaic during a fire, relative to species niche requirements and mobility, can have major impacts on flora and fauna dynamics.
  • 395
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Antiviral and Antimicrobial Peptides
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a ubiquitous class of secretable molecules involved in innate immunity via direct interaction with pathogens. AMP research has sought to describe the highly conserved cysteine rich C-domains of peptides, which determine molecular function; however, investigations into such molecular functions have generally been limited to antibacterial and antifungal defence in both vertebrates and invertebrates, with little research focusing on mollusc antiviral AMPs. Mollusc AMPs can be broadly divided into the following five groups: defensins, big defensins, mytilins, myticins, mytimacins, and mytimycins. All groups possess antibacterial activity, though few have been tested for antiviral activity, and thus the mollusc antiviral AMP mode of action is poorly understood. However, proposed modes of action of antiviral AMPs include targeting viral entry, viral uncoating, and inhibition of viral replication and endosomal escape.
  • 390
  • 07 Mar 2022
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