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Topic Review
Literacy
Literacy is traditionally defined as the ability to read and write. In the modern world, this is one way of interpreting literacy. A more broad interpretation is literacy as knowledge and competence in a specific area. The concept of literacy has evolved in meaning. The modern term's meaning has been expanded to include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge, solve mathematical problems and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture. The concept of literacy is expanding across OECD countries to include skills to access knowledge through technology and ability to assess complex contexts. A person who travels and resides in a foreign country but is unable to read or write in the language of the host country would also be regarded by the locals as illiterate. The key to literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Reading development involves a range of complex language underpinnings including awareness of speech sounds (phonology), spelling patterns (orthography), word meaning (semantics), grammar (syntax) and patterns of word formation (morphology), all of which provide a necessary platform for reading fluency and comprehension. Once these skills are acquired, the reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to apply to printed material critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought. The inability to do so is called illiteracy or analphabetism. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society".
  • 4.8K
  • 05 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Soil Erosion Hazards
Soil erosion is a severe threat to food production systems globally. Food production in farming systems decreases with increasing soil erosion hazards. Hazard is a situation or potential condition to harm or threat to life, health or damage to property or environment, social and economic disruption. The mass movement of soil is an indicator of a soil erosion hazard. This includes gully erosion, riverbank erosion, rock-falls, debris-falls and landslides that can create damage to the environment and livelihoods.
  • 4.8K
  • 22 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Short-Chain Fatty Acids
The relationship between diet and the diversity and function of the intestinal microbiome and its importance for human health is currently the subject of many studies. The type and proportion of microorganisms found in the intestines can determine the energy balance of the host. Intestinal microorganisms perform many important functions, one of which is participation in metabolic processes, e.g., in the production of short-chain fatty acids—SCFAs (also called volatile fatty acids). These acids represent the main carbon flow from the diet to the host microbiome. Maintaining intestinal balance is necessary to maintain the host’s normal health and prevent many diseases. The results of many studies confirm the beneficial effect of probiotic microorganisms on the balance of the intestinal microbiome and produced metabolites, including SCFAs. The aim of this review is to summarize what is known on the effects of probiotics on the production of short-chain fatty acids by gut microbes. In addition, the mechanism of formation and properties of these metabolites is discussed and verified test results confirming the effectiveness of probiotics in human nutrition by modulating SCFAs production by intestinal microbiome is presented.
  • 4.8K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Supercritical Water Gasification (SCWG)
Gasification with supercritical water (SCWG) is a thermochemical process which, exploiting the properties of supercritical water (374.1 °C and 22.1 MPa ), allows to obtain a syngas rich in hydrogen. Both biomass and waste plastic can be used as feedstock.
  • 4.8K
  • 18 Sep 2020
Topic Review
Eyelash Curler
An eyelash curler is a hand-operated mechanical device for curling eyelashes for cosmetic purposes. Usually only the upper eyelashes are curled.
  • 4.8K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Pashtun Tahafuz Movement
The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (Pashto: پښتون ژغورنې غورځنګ‎, Urdu: پشتون تحفظ تحریک‎; abbreviated PTM), or the Pashtun Protection Movement, is a social movement for Pashtun human rights based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Formerly called the Mahsud Tahafuz (or Protection) Movement, it was founded in May 2014 by eight students at Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan as an initiative for removing landmines from Waziristan and other parts of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, affected by the war in North-West Pakistan.
  • 4.8K
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Normal Strain
In physics, deformation is the continuum mechanics transformation of a body from a reference configuration to a current configuration. A configuration is a set containing the positions of all particles of the body. A deformation can occur because of external loads, intrinsic activity (e.g. muscle contraction), body forces (such as gravity or electromagnetic forces), or changes in temperature, moisture content, or chemical reactions, etc. Strain is related to deformation in terms of relative displacement of particles in the body that excludes rigid-body motions. Different equivalent choices may be made for the expression of a strain field depending on whether it is defined with respect to the initial or the final configuration of the body and on whether the metric tensor or its dual is considered. In a continuous body, a deformation field results from a stress field due to applied forces or because of some changes in the temperature field of the body. The relation between stress and strain is expressed by constitutive equations, e.g., Hooke's law for linear elastic materials. Deformations which cease to exist after the stress field is removed are termed as elastic deformation. In this case, the continuum completely recovers its original configuration. On the other hand, irreversible deformations remain. They exist even after stresses have been removed. One type of irreversible deformation is plastic deformation, which occurs in material bodies after stresses have attained a certain threshold value known as the elastic limit or yield stress, and are the result of slip, or dislocation mechanisms at the atomic level. Another type of irreversible deformation is viscous deformation, which is the irreversible part of viscoelastic deformation. In the case of elastic deformations, the response function linking strain to the deforming stress is the compliance tensor of the material.
  • 4.8K
  • 21 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.
  • 4.8K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Geodetic Datum
A geodetic datum or geodetic system (also: geodetic reference datum or geodetic reference system) is a coordinate system, and a set of reference points, used for locating places on the Earth (or similar objects). An approximate definition of sea level is the datum WGS 84, an ellipsoid, whereas a more accurate definition is Earth Gravitational Model 2008 (EGM2008), using at least 2,159 spherical harmonics. Other datums are defined for other areas or at other times; ED50 was defined in 1950 over Europe and differs from WGS 84 by a few hundred meters depending on where in Europe you look. Mars has no oceans and so no sea level, but at least two martian datums have been used to locate places there. Datums are used in geodesy, navigation, and surveying by cartographers and satellite navigation systems to translate positions indicated on maps (paper or digital) to their real position on Earth. Each starts with an ellipsoid (stretched sphere), and then defines latitude, longitude and altitude coordinates. One or more locations on the Earth's surface are chosen as anchor "base-points". The difference in co-ordinates between datums is commonly referred to as datum shift. The datum shift between two particular datums can vary from one place to another within one country or region, and can be anything from zero to hundreds of meters (or several kilometers for some remote islands). The North Pole, South Pole and Equator will be in different positions on different datums, so True North will be slightly different. Different datums use different interpolations for the precise shape and size of the Earth (reference ellipsoids). Because the Earth is an imperfect ellipsoid, localised datums can give a more accurate representation of the area of coverage than WGS 84. OSGB36, for example, is a better approximation to the geoid covering the British Isles than the global WGS 84 ellipsoid. However, as the benefits of a global system outweigh the greater accuracy, the global WGS 84 datum is becoming increasingly adopted. Horizontal datums are used for describing a point on the Earth's surface, in latitude and longitude or another coordinate system. Vertical datums measure elevations or depths.
  • 4.8K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Healthy Benefits of Natural Pigments
Natural pigments, including carotenoids, flavonoids and anthocyanidins, determine the attractive color of fruits. These natural pigments are essential secondary metabolites, which play multiple roles in the whole life cycle of plants and are characterized by powerful antioxidant activity. After decades of research and development, multiple benefits of these natural pigments to human health have been explored and recognized and have shown bright application prospects in food, medicine, cosmetics and other industries. 
  • 4.8K
  • 17 May 2021
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